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N'E\V YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER 



U T - D R S 



IDLEAVILD; 



OR, THE 



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"At King Komserai's cararanserai I dismounted from my camel ; and hen 
traveUers were entertained, on condition of telling their adventures." 



Eastern Stocy-Book. 



CHARLES SCRIBXER, 145 NASSAU STREET. 

1855. 






ESTEP.ED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by 

CHARIES SCRIBNElt, 

m Hie Clerk's Office for the District Court of the Southern District ol 
New Yark. 



.V. IT. TINSON, TA^S.E^S^E^.L^^O.. , 

„ „ ROOK AND JOR PinNTKFS KY STKAM 

S T K R E O T Y r K R , 

23 Beekman St., N. i. 



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JJ 



HON. JOSE 1^ 11 ORINNELL 

THESK OUT-DOOR SKETCHES OK TUE HOME 

TO WHOSE IX-DOOR IIAFPIXESS HIS KIND AFFE('Tf<»\ rs ONE OK THE 

COXSTAXT BLESSINGS, 

flrc GrntffuIIi} JtnlJ Goriialls J3ciiUatt&, 

BY HIS SOX-I\-LAW, 

N. p. WTLLTS. 

Jdleicild, October, 1S54. 



"^ixtUit. 



The following Tolume is a simple weaving into langunge of the 
every-day circumstances of an invalid retirement in the Highlands 
of the Hudson. It was written in Letters to the Home Journal, 
and it was expected by the author, that they would owe their 
interest to being plainly truthful, and to picturing exactly the 
life that formed itself around the new-comer to one particular- 
portion of our country — its climate, its conveniences, its accessi- 
bilities, and its moral and social atmosphere. As it is a neighbor- 
hood to which the sick are often sent by the physicians of New 
York, for the nearest mountain air, which is completely separated 
from the sea-board, the author has thought it might add a utility 
to his book to give his invalid experience with the rest. In this 
feature of it he has aimed to serve his fellow sufferers rather than 
to please the general reader. 

In contributing these sketches to a periodical, and contenting 
himself with no other formation of thoughts and events into a 
work, than the more putting of the loose sketches together, the 
author has committed another of the offences for which he has 
been called to account by every genial and kind critic, as well as 



^ 



Vi PREFACE. 

abused by every malicious and carping one. As this may be his 
last work, and it is time, perhaps, to say, what he has always felt, 
but neglected to say, deprecatorily, upon thi^ point, he will 
venture to quote the most recent of these fault-finding passages 
of criticism, with a word of reply to it. Thus says the New York 
Quarterly Review (of July, 1854), in a most liberal and friendly 
criticism, written, the author understands, by a clergyman who is 
a stranger to him : — 

" Mr. Willis is perhaps most distinguished as a writer of light, 
brilliant and dashing sketches, contributed to the magazines. 
His collected papers of this kind amount to three thick volumes. 
Notwithstanding their apparent absence of hard work, they have 
no doubt been carefully eliminated. In style they are original, 
artistic, and follow no previous model. * * He has that one 
merit — that his style is his own. There are elements in all his 
sketches, which, if combined in one well-compacted design, might 
make a sparkling novel, and Mr. Willis would better have con- 
sulted his own fame had lie seized upon the retirement of five 
years afforded him at Glenmary, to have wTought out some works 
of more enduring character, where that which seems light and 
flippant, when we have too much of it, and liable, like loose leaves, 
to be blown away, might have been securely bound up in some 
design much safer than board covers. The mere collection and 
collocution of papers which have served the purposes of ephemeral 
magazines, into books and volumes, may enhance their chance for 
time — but not for eternity. There is an opportunity for Mr. Willis 
to do at Idlewild what he has neglected to accomplish at Glen- 
mary. He has seen enough of the world to afford him ample 
material ; let him combine the qualities which sparkle along his 
works so that they may flash in one setting. This is good advice j 



PREFACE. Vll 

but it is to be observed that those who bind themselves down to 
the craving demands of the periodical press, soon jog along like 
patient horses in the traces, and forego the ambition and aspira- 
tion of authors. * * It would be better to run some of the 
Uome Journal metal into bullet-moulds, clip over an aspiring 
gray eagle as it is trespassing upon his air-territory over the 
bounds of Idlewild, pluck a feather, nib it to a sharp poiut, and 
go to work at that novel in two volumes," &c., &c. 

Kind as this is, the author feels that it implies, as do other 
criticisms, a misconception of both the aim and the impulse with 
which he has labored in his profession. It is a refusal to him of 
what he has never sought nor claimed in his prose writings— 
what, if he knows himself, he has never sufficiently wished, to give 
turn or color to a sentence. He could not but value '• fame," if 
it should be thus won, inasmuch as it might give pleasure to his 
children ; but, to Live, as variedly, as amply, and as worthily, 
as is possible to his human faculties, while upon this planet, has 
been his aim ; and not to be remembered after he shall have left 
it. Literature— periodical literature- offered him the readiest 
means for this— the least confining mode of subsistence, the freest 
access to contemporary mind and society, the most influence and 
power, the best habits of mental exercise and enlargement. He 
chose, it, therefore, as a profession. In it, as an editor, he found 
a power— over and above all power of serving himself— and upon 
this alone, aside from the objects just named, he has endeavored 
to keep a fixed purpose, suitable to the trust with which, in that 
power, he was charged. The reviewer above quoted, has, in one 
chance remark, borne testimony to his discharge of this trust- 
therein giving him, he must fJeely own, a certain '•' fame " which 
he hopes will belong to his writings while they live. He says :— 



Vlll PREFACE, 

" Mr. "Willis has usually minded his own business, and gone 
straight ahead in his literary career, without any apparent regard 
either of praise or blame, of appreciation, or neglect, or dislike ; 
* * and he has already, by words in season, built up the 
reputation of a score of people as securely, at least, as his own^ 

That the author has had no eye to "immortality," but has 
labored honestly and industriously for the wants of himself and 
those dear to him, and has served others whenever it was in his 
power, with what means and opportunities chance threw into his 
hands — if this, which he finds thus incidentally testified to by a 
stranger, be true, he has certainly achieved all his purpose in 
literature, and would be abundantly content with that, for all his 
fame. 

Idlemld, October, 1854. 



dDnnttEts. 



LETTER I. 
The Highland Terrace ^"^ 

LETTER II. 

Highland Terrace, Continued 26 

LETTER III. 
Lessening the Brook— Pig-Prophecy— Nearing of the City with Spring— the 
City Eye, as felt in the Country— Telegraph Wires, iKolian, ... 80 

LETTER IV. 
SUght of Small Streams in the Landscape— Character of Idlewild Brook— Legend 
and Name of our Nearest Village S6 

LETTER V. 

Reasons for Neighbors moving Off-Morals of Steamboat Landings— Class that 
is gradually taking Possession of the Hudson— Thought-property in a Resi- 
dence— Horizon-clock of IdlewUd— Society for the Eye, in a View. . . 45 

LETTER VI. 
Evergreen Independence of Seasons— Nature's Landscape Gardening— Weak- 
ness as to Reluctance in Planting Trees ^^ 

LETTER VII. 

Earlier City Migi-ation to the Country than usual— Peculiar Dignity-plant— Ohject 
of Country Farmers in takhig City Boarders for the Sununer— Suggestion as to 
City and Country Exchange of Hospitality 

1* 



X CONTENTS. 

LETTER VIII. 
Ownership in Nature worth Realizing— Thumb-and-finger Nationality of Yan- 
kees—United Experience of Many, as expressed in a Common-minded Man's 
Better Knowledge— Lack of Expression and Variety in Gates— Pig-tight 
Gates 62 

LETTER IX. 
Private Performance of Thunder-storms— Nature's Sundays— Marriage of Two 
Brooks — Funnychild's Deserted Bed. 67 

LETTER X. 
Making a Shelf-road— Character shown in Wall-laying— By-the-Day and By- 
the-Job— English Literalness and Yankee " Gumption," ... 72 

LETTER XI. 
Plank Foot-bridge over the Ravine— Its Hidden Location — Value of Old-man 
Friendships — Friend S. — His Visit to the Bridge— His Remembrance of Wash- 
ington — Tobacco Juice on Trees to Prevent Horse-biting, &c., &c. . . 73 

LETTER XII. 
Foliage and its Wonders— Caprice of Tree-living— Auto-verdure of Posts — 
Ilemlock, the Homestead Emblem, Ac, &c 84 

LETTER XIII. 
Noon Visitors to Scenery— The Bull-Frog at the Gate — Inconvenient Opening 
of a Spring — Frog Curiosity and Intelligence — Process of Animal Progres- 
sion, &c., &c 83 

LETTER XIV. 
Canterbury Rowdies — Pianos and Porkers — Unwelcome Visitors — Penalty of 
Pounding — A Public Benefactor. 95 

LETTER XV. 
Trouble in Gate Designing — Letter from an Unknown Correspondent, on Gates 
— ^Invisible Society at Idlewild — Correction of Error as to Hemlocks — Hand- 
some Irishman's Mistake in Felling Trees, &c 99 

LETTER XVI. 

Laurel-blossoming — The Imbedded Stone, and Jem's Neglect of his Country- 
man's honors — Sabbath stop to our Running Watei", &c., &c. . . 107 

LETTERXVII. 
EEfect of clearing out Underbrush from a Wood — Praise Disclaimed — Horror 
of Bloomeri-ized Evergreens — Neglect of departed Great Men — Carrion Nui- 
sance, &c., &c 112 

LETTER XVIII. 
Summer of Even Weather— Lightning-rods fulling into Disuse — Filling of 



CONTENTS. ^1 

CounfT Boarrtins-houses-Lioxury of Rural Remoteness-Viewless Peopling 
of a Spot-Wallace the Composer, and his Tribute to Alexander fcmU^h, 

&c.,&c 

LETTER XIX. 

Neglect of Personal Appearance in Country Seclusion-Unexploring Habits of 
City People-Dignity of Un-damage-ablc Dress-Thoughts on Cooper'a Man- 
sion being turned into a Boarding-house-Suggestion to Authors, as o 
burning their Influence to better Account-Letter from Coopersto.n^ 

&c.,&c. 

LETTER XX. 

Timely Seasons and Untimely Age in America-Wild Glen so ^ear the Hud- 
son-Finding Of Water LUies-Anchoring a Lily m a Bx-ook-Name ^of 
Moodna, &c., &c 

Avalanche or Storm-King-Idlewild Ravaged by the Flood-Accidents to Per- 
sons and Destruction to Property-House Laid Open-Rarene.s of such Phe^ 
nomena, &c., &c 

Gentlemao .owing a Cow- Dn'u.m.r ta.Jn out '° *»/';™ J" /^t, *! 
Freshot-Tlie Power ot a FlooJ-Lotly BnOgo Swept Away-Extent or Deso^ 
lation, &c., &c 

Young Lady killed by Lightn!lg at our Neighbor's House-Another Paralyzed- 
Careless General Attention to such Fearful Events, &c., Ic. . • - 

LETTER XXIV. 

T>^„hi^ «;prvice of out-of-door Seats— Difference 
DUemma as to Plac.ng ^''l';;'^'^^^^^^^^ by Women-Right of all 

Tlptween Apprcc ation of Landscape oy .ueu anu j ♦i„To«h 

Strangers to enter Beautiful Grounds-Favor of being Figures on the Land^- 

scape — lie, &c 

LETTER XXV. 

A Wet September-Effect on Trees-Freshets-Dam-building-Nature's Lesson 

in Water-power, &c., &c. • • 

TFTTER XXVI. 
Wet Seasons nnfavor»Me to Ilemlocks-The First Inlan,! Mile on the H-ason- 
"lle American Malvern and Chel.enhan._T„e Stean^boa. Land.ng a Fas.non^ 

able Resort-The Highland Gap at Sunset, &c 

Highway Pigs-Giving the Om" !?» Ride-Her ^-^^^ll^J-l°:^,X- 
Poets-Common Folks' Knowledge of Ne,ghl.or»-Letter from Co ^ P^^^ 

dent, &c., &c 



Xii CONTEXTS, 

LETTER XXVIII. 
Autumnal Privileges— Extent of Personal Orbit— Dignity of a Daily Diameter- 
Difference between Saddle and Carriage-Riding— Health in a Nobody- 
bath, .tc, &c 1S2 

LETTER XXIX. 

October's First Sunday— Silverbrook, and the Blacksmith's Story of its History 
—Storm-King and Black Peter— Effects of the Avalanche- Tribute to Child- 
ren's Love, &c., «S:c 1S7 

LETTER XXX. 
Working for Neighbors— Answers of Inquiries as to the price of Land, 
Farms, &c.—" Harriet's" Letter— Apples Promiscuous on Barn-floor— Ac- 
count of Society around us, &c., &c 193 

LETTER XXXI. 

Autumn Splendors — Road Tax and amaieur Road Making— Society for Tolunteer 
Raking— Difference of Roads and Neighborhoods— North and South of Idle- 
wild, &c., &c 202 

LETTER XXXII. 
Discovery of an Iron Mine in the Neighborhood — Lack of National Quickness at 
Beautifying Scenery — Poem on the Flood-ravages at Idlewild — Drawing and 
Landscape-Gardening, &c., <S:c 20S 

LETTER XXXIII. 
Sudden Fall of Leaves— November Haze — Fame of Newspaper-wrappers — Nam- 
ing of a Village — Legend of Moodna, the Indian Chief — Importance of Immor- 
talizing Men and Events by the Naming of Towns, &c., &c. . . . 214 

LETTER XXXIV. 
Mellow Sliddle in a November day — Ascent to Storm-King — Road from New- 
burg to West Point — Chances for Human Eyries — Difference of Climate be- 
tween the two Mountain-sides — Home-like familiarity of a Brook, «tc., &c. 219 

LETTER XXXV. 
Instance of Stick-a-pin-there — Survey of Premises after a Freshet — ^History of 
a Dam — Specimen of Yankee Coax-ocracy, &c., &c 225 

LETTER XXXVI. 
Pine Specimen of a Boy — ^Young America — Mr. Roe's Boys' School — Surveying 
Class in the Paths of the Ravine, &c., &c 231 

LETTER XXXVII. 
Interesting to Invalids only — Letter from an Invalid Clergyman — Reply — Keep- 
ing Disease in the Minority — Climate of the Tropics — ^Importance of Attention 
to Trifles, in Convalescence, &c., &c 235 



O X T E X T S . XIU 

LETTER XXXVIII. 
Summer in Decembei'^Flippertigibbet — Idleness — Annual Quarrelsomeness of 
Dogs — Pig-influence — Ilome without a Hog, &c., &c. .... 245 

LETTER XXXIX. 
Visit to Seven Lakes and Natural Bridge — Torrey the Blacksmith — Sunday 
in Nature — My Companion's Hobby — Hollett the Quaker — Morning Sensa- 
tions — Jonny Kronk's and its Cemetery — Mammoth Snapping-Turtle — Iron 
Mine, &c., &c 24S 

LETTER XL. 

Many-Lake Alps and their Woodsmen — Highland Life — Contrast between it and 
New York, only three Hours' Distance — The Difliculty — Natural Bridge — 
Driven on the Rocks — HoUett's House, and our Ascent to tlie Peak — Seven 
Lakes — Quaker and Panther Meeting in the "Woods, &c., &c. . . . 256 

LETTER XLI. 
Degrees of Horseback Acquaintance with a Road — Slaughter-House "Round 
by Headley's " — Geese and their Envy — Goose-Descent upon Unexpected 
Ice,&c., &c 2GG 

LETTER XLII. 

Pool of Bethesda above the Highlands — Climate of Highland Terrace— Late 
Snows — Christmas, and Dressing of Church — Poem on Farmers' Christmas 
Preparations — Black Peter — Snake Love of Solitude, &c., &c. . . . 271 

LETTER XLIII. 
Trip of the Family "Wagon to Newburgh — The Fashionable Recort — Chapman's 
Bakery — ^Aristocracy " setled down" — Newbui'gh as a Neighbor. . . 277 

LETTER XLIV. 
Personal Experience interesting to Invalids — Difficulty as to Horseback Exer- 
cise — Advice as to Winter-riding — Economies in Horse-owning — New Idea as 
to Exposure — Philosophy of Exercise to Scholars, &c., &c. . . . 234 

LETTER XLV. 

Snow and its Uses — Winter View of Grounds, as to Improvements — Old Women's 
Weather-Prophecy — Finding of an Indian God in the Glen — Idlewild a Sanc- 
tuary of Deities of the Weather — Name of Moodna, «fec., &c. . . 294 

LETTER XLVI. 
Hudson Frozen Solid — Boats on Runners — Water-lilies — ^Indian Legend, and 
Poem on it by a Friend — Philosophy of naming Streams hereabouts — Angola 
and its Epidemic — Story of Smart Boy, &c., <S:c 302 

LETTER XL VII. 

Boy-Teamster — Our Republic's worst-treated Citizen — Boy Condition in the 
Country— Our Neighborhood suited to Boy-Education in Farming— Vicinity 



XIV CONTENTS, 

of New York Market— Boy-Labor and Boy-Slavery— City Parents and their 
Disposal of Boys— Gardening Profits, &c., &c 309 

LETTER XLVIII. 
Living in tlie Country all the Year round — Trips to the City — Hindrances by 
Snow on the Track— Chat in the hindered Cars — Mr. Irving— Bad Ventilation 
— Late Arrival, &c., &c 821 

LETTER XLIX. 
First Signs of Spring- A Public of Invalids — An Invalid Chronicle — Letter from 

aLady— Our Friends.— Beauty of Old Age, &c., &c 323 

• 

LETTER L.. 

Breaking up of the River-ice — Dates of previous Resumjngs of Navigation — 
Companionship in the distant Views of Travel — Nature's Illnesses — Hill- 
Bides, &c., &c 334 

LETTER LI. 

Weather-wise Squirrels — Effect of Spring Winds on Roads— Dodge of Turnpike 
Companies— Anecdote of a Teamster's Revenge — The Kings in Republics — 
Road from Newburgh to West Point, ic, &c 342 

LETTER LII. 
Deceptive Grass-Patch — Why Northerners love Home — Tragedy and Turkey- 
cock— Suspicion of Neighborhood and Vindication— Don Quixote, the New- 
foundland Dog— Flippertigibbet, the Terrier— My Mare and her Dlness, &c. 343 

LETTER LIII. 
Cedar-Trees and their Secrets — ^Bird-Presence about Home — Our Night-Owl — A 
Bird's Claim on Hospitality — Difference between City and Country Influences — 
Death in a Neighbor's House, &c., &c. 356 

LETTER LIV. 
A Newfoundland Dog and his Nature — The Beauty of a Brook as a Playfellow 
for Children — Country Life's Opportunity to cultivate Intimacy with Child- 
ren — Local Protection against East Winds — Mechanical Alleviation for Night- 
Coughs, &c., &c 363 

LETTER LV. 

Snow-Storm in April — Newburgh to become a Seaport — Railroad from Hoboken, 
opposite Chamber Street, to West Point and Newburgh — Dutch Aristocracy — 
American difference from England as to Living near the Old Families, &c. 370 

LETTER LVI. 

Birds suffering from Snow — Answer to a Fault-finder — Preparing for Old Age 

by learning to live with Nature — Another Estimate of the Value of Farming 

— Common and strangely unvaried Idea of " a Villa" — Hints as to choosing 

and arranging a Home in the Country, &c., &c. . , . . • 378 



CONTENTS. XV 

LETTER LVII. 

Remarkable Land-slide — Woman nearly Buried — Our Gateway Stopped — 
Ravages of Floods — Embellishment of a Neighbor's Grounds by a Land- 
slide, &c., &c. 3S8 

LETTER LVIII. 
Immense Freshets — Islands in Solution — Curious Slides — Brickyards along the 
Hudson — Irish Laborers, and the Contrast between them and Native-Born 
Country People — The Infusorial Cemetery, &c., &c 894 

LETTER LIX. 

Distinctions of Rank in Vegetables — Splendid Outburst of Spring — Chivalry 
among Fowls — A daily Steamboat Luxury for this Neighborhood — Pliilosophy 
ofVisits to the City,A'C.,<S:c 401 

LETTER LX. 

Newness of Junes — Effects of the Eclipse — Cows embarrassed — Nature's Ca- 
prices — Visit to West Point — The Salute to the Visiting Committee — Cadets' 
Mess-Room — Professor Weir and the Gallery of Drawings — Parade — Stature 
of the Present Class of Cadets, &c., &c 410 

LETTER LXI. 

Adventure with a Snapping-Turtle — Wild black Cat, and other quadruped 
Bandits — Visit to a Revolutionary Soldier — Venerable Companion — Privations 
of the Army— Washington's features, i-c, «tc 424 

LETTER LXII. 
Celebration of the Fourth of July by Children — Procession through the Grounds 
of Idlewild — Song by the Children — Their Pic-nic in the Grove — Speeches, 
&c., &c 437 

LETTER LXIII. 

Government of the American Uomestead — Republic in the Country, but not in 

the City — Aristocracy of upper Servants cot tolerated — Each Individual's 

Self-Esteem to be cared for — Irish lad in his progress in Americanizing — 

Difficulty of other Servants allowing a Head Man, &c., &c. . . . 444 

LETTER LXIV. 
Invalid Wishes for Letters on their Class of Subjects — Boston Physician and his 
Alkaline Treatment — Experiment and its Failui'e — Consumption and its Alle- 
viations, &c., &c 459 

LETTER LXV. 
Affection for our Doctors — Excellent Letter from ray Friend of the Alkali — Taboo 
upon Tea — Letter from an Allopathic Physician — Doctor's Visits, &c., &c. 4G3 

LETTER LXVI. 
Chat upon Invalid Indiscretions— Dietetics of the Soul— Forenoon on Horse- 



XVI CONTENTS. 

back— Use of an Errand in a Ride— Steel Pens, and the consequent Decline 
of Penknives — Fatigue after Pleasure, <fcc., &c. 475 

LETTER LXYII. 

Sufferers from Drought— Our Hyla or Tree-toad— Cure of Jaundice— Abuses by 
Telegraph-menders, &c., &c 4S6 

LETTER LXVIII. 
DifiSculty of knowing what cures Us— Od-ic Influence — Letter from an Artist, 
introducing and describing an Od-ometrician— Ilis Letter — The Experiment 
—Table-movings, &c., &c 492 

LETTER LXIX. 

Acquaintance across the Styx — Letter from our Friend the Od-ometri- 
cian, &c. . 506 

LETTER LXX. 
Certainty of a Genius Loci — His Susceptibility of Pique — Curious Exercise of 
it— The Drip-Rock Parlor— Check to a falling Leaf— Farewell. . . 513 



LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER I. 

THE HIGHLAND TERRACE. 

[ The foUowing description, written for Mr. Putnam'3 very splendid work, tho 
♦' Boole of the Picturesque," was published immediately before the commence- 
ment of the Letters from Idlewild, and while the author was deciding upon 
the spot for his future residence. ] 

West Point is Kature's Northern Gate to New York 
city. As soon as our rail-trains shall equal those of 
England, and travel fifty or sixty miles an hour, the 
Hudson, as far as West Point, will be but a fifty-mile exten- 
sion of Broadway. The river banks will have become a 
suburban avenue — a long street of villas, whose busiest 
resident will be content that the City Hall is within an 
hour of his door. From this metropolitan avenue into the 
agricultural and rural region, the outlet will be at the 
city's Northern Gate, of West Point— a gate whose 



18 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

threshold divides Sea-board from In-land, and whose 
mountain pillars were heaved up with the changeless 
masonry of creation. 

The passage through the Mountain-Gate of West 
Point is a three-mile Labyrinth, whose clue-thread is the 
channel of the river — a complex wilderness, of romantic 
picturesqueness and beauty, which will yet be the teem- 
ing Switzerland of our country's Poetry pencil — and, at 
the upper and northern outlet of this labyrinthine portal 
of the city, there is a formation of hills which has an ex- 
pression of most apt significance. It looks like a gesture 
of loelcome from Nature, and an invitation to look around 
you ! From the shoulder-like bluff upon the river, an 
outspreading range of Highlands extends back, like the 
curve of a waving arm — the single mountain of Shawan- 
GUXK (connected with the range by a valley like the bend 
of a graceful wrist), forming the hand at the extremity. 
It is of the area within the curve of this bended arm — a 
Highland Terrace of ten or twelve miles square, on the 
west bank of the river — that we propose to define the 
capabilities, and probable destiny. 

The Highland Terrace we speak of — ten miles square, 
and lying within the curve of this outstretched arm of 
mountains — has an average level of about one hundred 
and twenty feet above the river. It was early settled ; 
and, the rawness of first clearings having long ago disap- 



THE HIGHLAND TERRACE. 19 

pcared, the well-distributed sccoiid woods are full grown, 
and stand, undisfigured by stumps, in park-like roundness 
and maturity. The entire area of the Terrace contains 
several villages, and is divided up into cultivated farms, 
the walls and fences in good condition, the roads lined 
with trees, the orchards full, the houses and barns sufii- 
ciently hidden with foliage to be picturesque — the whole 
neighborhood, in fact, within any driving distance, quite 
rid of the angularity and well-known ungracefulness of a 
newly-settled country. 

Though the Terrace is a ten-mile plain, however, its 
roads arc remarkably varied and beautiful, from the 
curious multiplicity of deep glens. These are formed by 
the many streams which descend from the half-bowl of 
mountains inclosing the plain, and — their descent being 
rapid and sudden, and the river into which they empty 
being one or two hundred feet below the level of the coun- 
try around — they have gradually worn beds much deeper 
than ordinary streams, and are, from this and the charac- 
ter of the soil, unusually picturesque. At every mile or 
so, in driving which way you will, you come to a sudden 
descent into a richly wooded vale — a bright, winding 
brook at bottom, and romantic recesses constantly tempt- 
ing to loiter. In a long summer, and with perpetual driv- 
ing over these ten-mile interlacings of wooded roads and 
glens, we daily found new scenery, and heard of beautiful 



20 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

spots, within reach and still unseen. From every little 
rise of the road, it must be remembered, the broad bosom 
of the Hudson is visible, with foreground variously com- 
bined and broken ; and the lofty mountains (encircling just 
about as much scenery as the eye can compass for enjoy- 
ment), form an ascending hackground and a near horizon 
which are hardly surpassed in the world for boldness and 
beauty. To what degree sunsets and sunrises, clouds, 
moonlight, and storms, are aggrandized and embellished 
by this peculiar formation of country, any student and 
lover of nature will at once understand. Life may be, 
outwardly, as much more beautiful, amid such scenery, as 
action amid the scenery of a stage is more dramatic than 
in an unfurnished room. 

The accessibilities from Highland Terrace arc very de- 
sirable. West Point is perhaps a couple of miles below, 
by the river bank ; and, though mountain-bluffs and pre- 
cipices now cut off the following of this line by land, a road 
has been surveyed and commenced along the base of Cro'- 
nest, which, when completed, will be one of the most pic- 
turesque drives in the world. A part of it is to be blown 
out from the face of the rock ; and, as the lofty eminences 
will almost completely overhang it, nearly the whole road 
will be in shade in the afternoon. To pass along this ro- 
mantic way for an excursion to the superb military grounds 
of West Point, and to have the parades and music within 



SUMMER RESORTS. 21 

an easy drive, will be certainly an unusual luxury for a 
country neighborhood. The communication is already 
open for vehicles, by means of a steam ferry, which runs 
between Cornwall Landing (at the foot of the Terrace), 
and Cold Spring and the Military Wharf— bringing these 
three beautiful spots within a few minutes' reach of each 
other— Morris the song-writer's triple-view site of "Under- 
chff," by the way, overlooking the central of these High- 
land-Ferry Landings. 

It may be a greater or less attraction to the locality of 
the Terrace, but it is no disadvantage, at least, that three 
of the best frequented summer resorts are within an after- 
noon drive of any part of it— the West Point Uotel, 
CozzENs's, whicli is a mile below, and Powelton House, 
which is five or six miles above the Point, at Newburgh. 
For accessibility to these fashionable haunts of strangers 
and travellers, and the gaieties and hospitalities for which 
they give opportunity— for enjoyment of military shows 
and music— for all manner of pleasure excursions by land 
and water, to glens and mountain-tops, fishing, hunting, 
and studying of the picturesque— Highland Terrace will 
probably be a centre of attraction quite unequalled. 

The river-side length of the Terrace is about five miles 
—Cornwall at one end and Newburgh at the other. At 
both these places there are landings for the steamers, and 
from both these are steam ferries to the opposite side of 



22 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

the river, bringing the fine neighborhood of Fishkill and 
Cold Sprixg within easy reach. Kewburgh is the metro- 
polis of the Terrace — with its city-like markets, hotels, 
stores, trades and mechanic arts — an epitome of New 
York convenience within the distance of an errand. 
Downing, one of our most eminent horticulturists, once 
resided here, and Powell, one of the most enterprising 
of our men of wealth, lives here still ; and, along one of 
the high acclivities of the Terrace, are the beautiful coun- 
try seats of Durand, our first landscape painter, Miller, 
who has presented the neighborhood ^vith a costly and 
beautiful church of stone, Yerplanck, Sands, and many 
others, whose tastes in ground and improvements add 
beauty to the river drive. J 

To the class of seekers for sites of rural residences, for 
whom we are drawing this picture, the fact that the Ter- 
race is beyond suburban distance from New York, will be 
one of its chief recommendations. What may be under 
stood as "Cockney annoyances" will not reach it. But 
it will still be sufficiently and variously accessible from 
the city. On its own side of the river there is a rail- 
route from Newburgh to Jersey city, whose first station 
is in the centre of the Terrace, at " VaiFs Gate," and by 
which ISTew York will eventually be brought within two 
hours or less. By the two ferries to the opposite side of 
the river, the stations of the Hudson Railroad arc also 



UNION OF GREAT THOROUGHFARES. 23 

accessible, bringing the city within equal time ou another 
route. The many boats upon the river, touching at the 
two landings at all hours of day and night, enable you to 
vary the journey to and fro, with sleeping, reading, or 
tranquil enjoyment of the scenery. Friends may come to 
you with positive luxury of locomotion, and without 
fatigue ; and the monotony of access to a place of resi- 
dence, by any one conveyance — an evil very commonly 
complained of — is delightfully removed. 

There is a very important advantage of the Highland 
Terrace, which we have not yet named. It is tJie spot on 
the Hudson where tJie, two greatest thoroughfares of the North 
are to cross each other. Tlie intended route from Bostoivto 
Lake Erie here intersects the rail-and-river routes between 
New York and Albany. Coming by Plainfield and lEart- 
ford to Fishkill, it here takes ferry to Xewburgh, and 
traverses the Terrace by the connecting link already com- 
pleted to the Erie Railroad — thus bringing Boston within 
six or eight hours of this portion of the river. Western 
and Eastern travel will then be direct from this spot, like 
Southern and Northern ; and Albany and New York, 
Boston and Buffalo, will be four poiuts all within reach 
of au easy excursion. 

To many, the most essential charm of Highland Ter- 
race, however (as a rural residence in connection with 
life in New York), ^vill be the fact that it is the Ticarest 



24 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

accessible j)oint of complete inland climate. Medical science 
tells us that nothing is more salutary than change from 
the seaboard to the interior, or from the interior to the 
seaboard ; and between these two climates the ridge of 
mountains at West Point is the first effectual separation. 

The raw east winds of the coast, so unfavorable to 
some constitutions, are stopped by this wall of cloud- 
touching peaks, and, with the rapid facilities of communi- 
cation between salt and fresh air, the balance can be 
adjusted without trouble or inconvenience, and as much 
taken of either as is found healthful or pleasant. The 
trial of climate which the writer has made, for a long 
summer, in the neighborhood of these mountainous hiding- 
places of electricity, the improvement of health in his 
own family, and the testimony of many friends who have 
made the same experiment, warrant him in commending 
it as a peculiarly salutary and invigorating air. 

We take pains to specify, once more, that it is to a 
certain class, in view of a certain new phase in the philo- 
sophy of life, that these remarks are addressed. For 
those who must be in the city late and early, on any and 
every day, the distance will be inconvenient, unless with 
unforeseen advances in the rate of locomotion. For those 
who require the night and day dissipations of New York, 
and who have no resources of their own, a nearer resi- 
dence might also be more desirable. For mere seekers 



HEALTH, WEALTH, A X D E N J Y JI E N T , 25 

of seclusion and economy it is too near the city, and the 
ncidiborhood would be too luxurious. But for those who 
have their time in some degree at their own disposal — 
who have competent means for luxurious independence — 
who have rural tastes and metropolitan refinements 
rationally blended — who have families whicli they wish 
to surround with the healthful and elegant belongings of 
a home, while, at the same time they wish to keep pace 
with the world, and enjoy what is properly and only 
enjoyable in the stir of cities — for this class — the class, as 
we said before, made up of Leisure, Refinement, and 
Luxury — modern and recent changes are preparing a 
new theory of what is enjoyable in life. It is a mixture 
of city and country, with, iJie, home in the country. And the 
spot with the most advantages for the first American 
trial of this new combination, is, we venture confidently 
to record, the Highland Terrace, enclrcled in the ex- 
tended ARM OF THE MOUNTAINS ABOVE WeST PoINT. 



2 



26 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER II. 

HIGHLAND TERRACE CONTINUED. 

[ This Letter also preceded the commencement of the regular series of Idlewild 
Papers.] 

Day before yesterday, a cold and raw snow-storm kept 
us housed by the fire. To-day, the flies were troublesome 
to my horse, and the shade of the Sontags of the woods — 
(the maples, still full-leaved and only more beautiful with 
autamn) — was refreshing to both of us. It is, as I write, 
a summer's evening — crickets iterating, mosquitoes 
reconnoitering, wasps stretching their legs, and evidently 
reconsidering their premature givings-over, the ground 
fragrant with the twilight dew, and — my pen embarrass- 
ed. I had prepared to give you a picture of the Tropics, 
thinking you might like it as a contrast to stave off the 
first rudeness of winter. But in Broadway, to-day, it 
must have been as hot as Hayti — and of Hayti, therefore, 
you would rather read when it is cooler. What shall I 
write about ? 

October and "Webster have left us — one gone to the 
Past, the other to the Future — ^but the parting of both, 



AN OCTOBER SABBATH. 27 

like a Sabbath of midsummer. What a day was Suuday, 
the 31st ! — tranquil, balmy, genial, beautiful. I speut 
its "service-time" with Nature — not irreligiously to my- 
self, though I fear it seemed so to my neighbors. Let 
me describe it to you (even if there seem little to record), 
for the apparition of beauty, in face, or mountain, 
weather or flower, grows to be more and more of an 
event to me. Standing aside and letting the world crowd 
on, as I have done of late, the sense of what is fair and 
excellent has rallied, like the quality which the pressure 
had most overborne, and I am most moved by what the 
day brings to admire. Is this a change to be sad about ? 
We should have a sweet word, like " sunset," for depart- 
ed health — the clouds so brighten with it. 

As I was saying, October's dying day was a Sabbath 
of profound beauty. (You may have realized it in the 
city, as the prisoner hears the music of the band march- 
ing under his window.) I drove along the Hudson, a 
mile or more — taking wife and children to church — and, 
witli the last note of the bell, stood tying my horse to the 
fence. (You know the church. It is that pretty struc- 
ture of stone which is the gem of this ten-mile Terrace of 
the Highlands. The bell, in its turret you remember, 
sends its echoes into the elfin haunt of Drake's poem — • 
the wild home of the " Culprit Fay.") Just across the 
road lay a broad lawn, with a skirt of noble trees on its 



28 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

farther edge, and the river lay below. Ah, thought I, as 
I looked around, that little church is but a chapel within 
a vast cathedral — the Hudson a broad aisle, the High- 
lands a thunder-choir and gallery. Black Rock a pulpit, 
and a blue dome over all — and lo ! Nature, in her sur- 
plice of summer, ready to preach the sermon ! Why not 
do my worshipping out of doors ? 

I have always found it easier to be devout when pacing 
slowly, than when sitting still. I should pray better, 
even in a church, if I could walk the aisle, instead of 
remaining motionless in a pew. " The groves were God's 
first temples," and it was, perhaps, because men could 
there walk and pray that the early saints were more pious. 
The more the body is pent up, the more thoughts wander, 
is a common human experience, I believe — truer even of 
pews than of prisons. 

Nature, as you know, seldom repeats herself, even in 
an every-day morning, but seems to keep sky and weather 
in an eternal succession of new experiments. I had never 
seen the Hudson look as on this last day of October. It 
was strange as well as beautiful. The Terrace Bay (that 
broad sheet spread below the ten-mile lap of the High- 
lands, on a knee of which sits Newburgh), was all one 
breathless surface, but half of it was in shadow as dark 
as polished steel. Water so silvery bright and so inky 
black I never had seen together. Of every mountain 



nature'ssermon. 39 

there was a mirrored reflex ; but one was copied in liglit, 
one in darkness — like truth in reputation. And the sails 
of a fleet of becalmed vessels dotted this far mirror like 
snow-flakes lightly fallen. Nothing moved. Nature 
seemed to have bid even the un-Sabbath-keeping keels to 
stop and let the scene look holy. 

Up and down under the trees edging the high bank of 
the river, I paced out the service-time, hearing every note 
of the organ, hymning it on the other side of the lawn, 
and eloquently preached to, by Nature — the theme God's 
wondrous works, and our many blessings in open air. It 
was a sermon I shall remember. My heart was warm 
with it as I met the congregation coming from the ser- 
mon in the church, though probably they, and the 
preacher I had not heard, set me down for a vagrant, 
profaning the day. My mention of it, as you will under- 
stand, is partly vindicatory. Die who will, in these days, 
the obituary notices strive mainly to prove that he was 
Dious. 



30 LETTERS FROM IDLEWII. D. 



LETTER III. 

Lessening the Brook— Pig-Prophecy — Nearing of the City with Spring — the 
City Eye, as felt in the Country — Telegraph Wires, ^olian. 

April 2d, 1853. 

The Brook of Idlewilcl, like myself, is beginning to les- 
sen its individualism, at the approach of summer visitors. 
With the preparation for coming back of the leaves, the 
torrent, so lonely and loud in winter, begins to hush to a 
brook little heard ; and its foam-clad cascades and rapids 
show but for common rocks, blest only in the pleasant 
shade that comes with their renewed insignificance. So 
it is ! Take summer from us — stream or man — and, 
" with the winter of our discontent," comes a strengthening 
of the floods within us, these again stilling and lessening 
with the return of more genial surroundings. Gome, bro- 
ther brook ! let us murmur contented along ! What we 
lose in one season we gain in another — the lonelier and 
colder around, the louder and prouder in ourselves — the 
bleaker, the stronger — the drearier, the more clothed with 
music and majesty of our own. 

Spite of the pig-prophecy in December, we have had 
plenty of snow ; the frost, of course, having little chance 



URBS IN RURE 



31 



at the ground, and the freshets abundant— both hasten- 
ers of Spring. Yet it was a sensible old woman of our 
neighborhood who brought me the report. She went to 
the pig-killing, as usual, to beg the 'pig' smelt for her cat. 
And this layer of unwholesome fat— Nature's prepara- 
tion against cold, like an inside blanket for the bowels of 
the pig— she assured me was, 'Hhis year, next to 
nothing, and a sure sign of little or no snow." I hired 
a sleigh instead of buying one, upon the strength of it— 
of course a loser by putting my faith in pig's bowels and 
their prophetic preparations for the winter. 

With the disappearance of ice from the Hudson (so 
that we can cross regularly to the railroad), and with the 
reappearance of the steamers on the river, we are shoved 
down to a suburb once more. The rattling monster 
plying along the shore opposite, with its smoke-tail high 
in air, was in New York an hour and a half ago. Broad- 
way is within reach— shops and picture-galleries, lions and 
lectures, calls and confectionery, friends and fashions, 
dust, dandies and omnibuses— all within the goings 9-id 
comi'ngs of a day. Yet we have been country-folks for 
six months— so remotely buried behind mountains and 
dilatory mails, that the city seemed a perpetual yes- 
terday, impossible to sympathize with or make use of. 
The Highland Terrace (the ten-mile lap of mountains on 
whose knee we sit, overlooking the river) is the Switzer- 



32 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

land of summer visitors from New York ; the place to 
bring families to, for change of air ; the paradise of 
scenery and farm boarding-houses with little to pay ; no 
gaieties except pic-nic-ing and horseback-riding, and no 
champagne or '' fashion," except what you bring with you. 
Half the population of the neighborhood, therefore, drops 
away with the autumn foliage and returns with the violets 
and strawberries. But it is droll what a double sort of 
place it makes, to have the society thus deciduous. 
Where the trees and farm-houses shed their leaves and 
lodgers together, it curiously intensifies " the seasons" for 
those who stay on with the evergreens. 

No ! judging by the " teams " and people on the road, 
you would scarce believe yourself in the same part of the 
country, before the *' first cold snap " and after. City lin- 
gerers stay on till then. But when a fire to breakfast 
by is no longer a deniable necessity — and, with some 
particularly frosty morning, there is a general radiation, 
towards the steamboat landing, of loads of trunks, chil- 
dren's chairs, bathing-tubs, servants and side-saddles — 
the feel of the city eye is, by common consent, suddenly 
taken off. For the first time in six months, it is obvious 
that everybody passing has dressed for the neighbors 
only. Even the few wealthy people who occupy the beau- 
tiful sites upon the river, lay aside their fine carriages and 
begin to do their driving in light wagons. The farmers, 



T E L E G II A P H I C MUSIC. 



33 



however,— the "regular bone and sinew," who would 
scout the idea of being subject to anybody's criticism ot 
their appearance — betray, by a unmistakable eruption of 
old hats, shabby coats and rusty harnesses, that the dis- 
ease of human vanity is epidemic ; that they had been all 
summer "sitting for their pictures" to the strangers 
among us ; that the neighbors, who know all about our 
crops and acres, are not to be so carefully dressed for ; and 
that, now the pretty girls are gone from the roads, with 
their broad-brimmed straw hats and blue ribbons, even 
the riding behind a team is a different matter— horses, 
somehow, to be less curried, and shaving every day not 
so absolutely necessary. 

To being affected by the season, however — to being 
less susceptible to winter than to summer wind— there is 
one delicious exception. With a November blast as with 
a June breeze, the news passes to music ! Whether country 
folks or city belles listen, the iEolian harps strung along 
upon the telegraph poles, play perpetually the same. To 
the strange beauty of this music (little noticed or valued) 
I have become quite wedded, in my life out of doors, for 
the last winter. It is more varied and beautiful than 
people think. You can always hear it— if not as you 
walk upon the road, at least by laying your ear against 
the poles — and, by selecting one that stands near a 
running stream, you may hear a duet of breeze and brook, 

2* 



34 T^ETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

a capricious out-singing of each other alternately by wind 
and water, that is as heavenly to muse by as a voluntary 
of Nature well could be. The poles differ very much, 
both in the quantity and quaUty of sound — partly, per- 
haps, from difference of size, or kind of wood, or tightness 
with which the wire is pressed by the leaning— but, l^y stop- 
ping in your walks, you get to know these with their vari- 
ations, and you may thus choose your standing-place, and 
have music fainter or louder to suit your mood. There is 
one telegraph post, by a little bridge which crosses Idle- 
wild Brook, where I have heard a great deal of waking- 
dream accompaniment. Stopping there with the glow of 
exercise in the blood, there seems a kind of fellowship in 
the instrument's being, like oneself, independent of the 
wintry air. The invalid's nerves, too (as much more 
susceptible to pleasure as to pain), are ready for harmony 
in its most delicate caprices. What news was going past 
on those wires — what death or marriage, love or business, 
was being told in those varied vibrations — I did not lose 
romance by trying to guess or discriminate. The same 
tune seldom carries the same language to any two hearts. 
But there it was, murmuring day by day, in changeful 
contention with the brook, always somewhat audible 
when closely Hstened for, and often as loud as a love- 
whisper, and as changefully expressive, and I must own 
to have grown habituated to it as a luxury. How many 



FREEOPERAS. 85 

good things we may have, in this mercenary world, after 
all, without paying for them ! " Telegraphing is expen- 
sive," but here is its greatest advantage (per my use) and 
nothing to pay. I trust the stockholders will not take 
the hint, however, and put sentry-boxes around the posts, 
to be let out for roadside operas I 



36 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER IV. 

Slight of Small Streams in the Landscape— Character of Idlewild Brook— Legend 
and Name of our Nearest Village. 

AprU 16, 1S53. 

Among " the neglected of this world," I have always 
thought, are the streams under the river size — those that 
have valleys of their own and can turn a mill, but are 
not navigable and scarcely " down on the map." The 
way travellers go up the Hudson, — expatiating on its 
scenery and glorifying it in prose and rhyme, but pass, 
without even a look of inquiry or recognition, the outlet- 
openings of numberless "runs," brooks, "creeks," and 
" kills," which are tributary to that noble river, Imt as 
beautiful in degree and much more varied and secluded 
is, like the treatment of the lesser poets, a thing to bo 
protested against, if only to show that, of such servile 
Caesar-or-nobody-dom, such unenlightened worship of 
mere bigger-ness, one is not, oneself, a part. 

My own experience is, that it must be a small stream 
to be enjoyed, both sides at a time. From the deck of a 
steamer on the Hudson, its two shores are so indistinct 
as to be only admired for what beauty of outline they 



IDLEWILDBROOK. 31 

may have. The slopes, dells, juttiug banks, rock-shadows, 
caprices of curve at water's edge, verdure and foliage, are 
confused by the distance into a wall of grey. Ilence the 
disappointment that is sometimes expressed by the steam- 
boat passenger, at a first view of the river of whose 
beauty he has heard so much. Landscape-loving is more 
affectionate than reverential. One wants just enough of 
it. That key-word to happiness, competency — what one 
is competent to appreciate and no more — may be applied 
as aptly to water-courses as to wealth. Though living 
upon the bank of the Hudson, therefore, and admiring it 
boundlessly in the labyrinth of Ilighlands through which 
it winds away from my daily view, I shall be tender- 
hearted only to the brook hidden behind me. The glen 
of Idlewild is but a morning's ramble in extent — a kind 
of Trenton Falls for one — but, its stream falling over a 
hundred feet within our own gate, and sometimes a cata- 
ract that would bring down a sloop or a lumber-raft, it 
has varieties of charm that will at least occupy what 
loving I have time for. I have a chance sympathy with 
it, in one point, moreover. The salable uses to which its 
power has been put — its " water-privileges " — are now of 
little or no value. A miller near me, even with plenty of 
water, finds it cheaper to grind by steam. A " mill-seat " 
and a poem are things getting less and less likely to " pay." 
We are becoming mere ornamentals, Idlewild and I. 



38 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

What poetry I may write upon irresistible impulse, and 
wliat vagaries of water there may be, from snow-melting 
or summer freshet, will be for those who idle near us, or 
for such occasional appreciator as chance may send along. 

My windows — some two hundred feet above the Hud- 
son — overhang, on one side, the meeting of our lovely 
brook with a respectable creek ; which two tributaries, 
immediately after, glide blissfully together into the great 
river, and (like many a beau and belle, famous while 
separate, but who marry and are heard of no more) pass 
the remainder of their fresh-water life in swelling the 
general stream where they are useful and forgotten. 

The " creek" I should redeem from the English inter- 
pretation of the word. It is not an "inlet" or ''corner 
in a haven," but a rocky and rapid stream, coming down 
by a noble aisle from the mountains, and as large as half 
the celebrated rivers of England. Its name is a matter 
of some doubt. The common people call it " Murderer's 
Creek," which the more intelligent of the neighbors say 
is a corruption of Moodna's Creek — Moodna* having 
been the name of an Indian chief whose tribe lingered 
long by its secluded waters after the coming of the white 
man. 

My next neighbor up stream, Mr. Philip Yerplank 

* still others say that thQ word i^ Iilerclnet; and that this was the name of the 
first English settler. 



INDIAN TRADITION. ^^^ 

(between whose noble promontory lawn and our own 
Highland eyrie these two streams have their meadow- 
meeting and united forthgoing), gives me the following as 
a tradition which may possibly contain the etymology. 
It is a slip from an old newspaper, and I copy it as it 
stands : 

"Little more than a century ago, the beautiful region watered 
by this stream was possessed by a small tribe of ludians, which 
has long since become extinct, or incorporated with some other 
savage nation of the West. Three or four hundred yards from 
where the stream discharges itself into the Hudson, a white family 
of the name of Stacey had established itself in a log house, by 
tacit permission of the tribe, to whom Stacey had made himself 
useful by his skill in a variety of little arts highly estimated by 
the savages. In particular, a friendship subsisted between him 
and an old Indian called Naoman, who often came to his house, 
and partook of his hospitality. The Indians never forgive injuries 
or forget benefits. The family consisted of Stacey, his wife, and 
two children-a boy and a girl-the former five, the latter three 

years old. 

"One day Naoman came to Stacey's log hut, in his absence, 
lighted his pipe, and sat down. He looked very serious, some- 
times sighed deeply, but said not a word. Stacey's wife asked 
him what was the matter, and if he was sick. He shook his head, 
sighed, but said nothing, and soon went away. The next day he 
came again, and behaved in the same manner. Stacey's wife 
began to think strange of thia, and related it to her husband, who 
advised her to urge the old man to an explanation the next time 



40 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

he came. Accordingly, when he repeated his visit the day after, 
she was more importunate than usual. At last the old Indian 
said — 

" * I am a red man, and the pale faces arc our enemies — why 
should I speak ?' 

" ' But my husband and I are your friends ; you have eaten salt 
with us a thousand times, and my children have sat on your knee 
as often. If you have anything on your mind, tell it me.' 

'* ' It will cost me my life if it is known, and the white-faced 
women are not good at keeping secrets,' replied Naoman. 

" * Try me, and see.' 

" * Will you swear by your Great Spirit you will tell none but 
your husband V 

" * I have none else to tell.' 

" ' But will you swear ?' 

'-'I do swear by our Great Spirit I will tell none but my 
husband.' 

" * Not if my tribe should kill you for not telling ?' 

" ' Not if your tribe should kill me for not telling.' 

" Naoman then proceeded to tell her that, owing to some 
encroachments of the white people below the mountain, his tribe 
had become irritated, and were resolved that night to massacre all 
the white settlers within their reach. That she must send for her 
husband, inform him of the danger, and as secretly and speedily as 
possible take their canoe, and paddle with all haste over the river 
to Fishkill for safety. * Be quick and do nothing that may excite 
suspicion,' said Naoman, as he departed. 

" The good wife sought her husband, who was down on the river 
fishing, told him the story, and as no time was to be lost, they 
proceeded to their boat, which was unluckily filled with water. 



THE PURSUIT AND CAPTURE. 41 

It took some time to clear it out, and meanwhile Stacey recol- 
lected his gun which had been left behind. He proceeded to the 
house and returned with it. All this took up considerable time, 
and precious time it proved to this poor family. 

" The daily visits of old Naoman, and his more than ordinary 
gravity, had excited suspicion in some of the tribe, who had 
accordingly paid particular attention to the movements of Stacey. 
One of the young Indians who had been kept on the watch, seeing 
the whole family about to take their boat, ran to the little Indian 
village, about a mile off, and gave the alarm. Five Indians col- 
lected, ran down to the river side, where their canoes were moored, 
jumped in and paddled after Stacey, who, by this time, had got 
some distance out into the stream. They gained on him so fast, 
that twice he dropped his paddle and took up his gun. But his 
wife prevented his shooting, by telling him, that if he fired, and 
they were afterwards overtaken, they would meet no mercy from 
the Indians. He accordingly refrained, and plied his paddle, till 
the sweat rolled in big drops down his forehead. All would not 
do ; they were overtaken within a hundred yards of the shore, and 
carried back with shouts of yelling triumph. 

""When they got on shore, the Indians set fire to Stacey's house, 
and dragged himself, his wife and children to their village. Here 
the principal old men, and Naoman among the rest, assembled to 
deliberate on the affair. The chief among them, stated that some 
of the tribe had undoubtedly been guilty of treason in apprising 
Stacey, the white man, of the designs of the tribe, whereby they 
took the alarm and well-nigh escaped. He proposed to examine 
the prisoners, as to who gave the information. The old men 
assented to this, Naoman among the rest. Stacey was first inter- 
rogated by one of the old men, who spoke English, and inter- 



42 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

prcted to the others. Stacey refuied to betray his informant. His 
wife was then questioned, while at the same moment two Indians 
stood threatening the two children with tomahawks in case she did 
not confess. She attempted to evade the truth, by declaring that 
she had a dream the night before which had alarmed her, and that 
she had persuaded her husband to fly. 

" ' The Great Spirit never deigns to talk in dreams to a white 
face,' said the old Indian : ' "Woman, thou hast two tongues and 
two faces. Speak the truth, or thy children shall surely die.' 
The little boy and girl were then brought close to her, and the 
two savages stood over them, ready to execute their bloody orders. 

" ' Wilt thou name,' said the old Indian, ' the red man who 
betrayed his tribe ? I will ask thee three times.' The mother 
answered not. * Wilt thou name the traitor ? This is the second 
time.' The poor mother looked at her husband, and then at her 
children, and stole a glance at Naoman, who sat smoking his pipe 
with invincible gravity. She wrung her hands and wept ; but 
remained silent. ' Wilt thou name the traitor ? 'tis the third and 
last time.' The agony of the mother waxed more bitter ; again 
she sought the eye of Naoman, but it was cold and motionless ; a 
pause of a moment awaited her reply, and the tomahawks were 
raised over the heads of the children, who besought their mother 
not to let them be murdered. 

" ' Stop I' cried Naoman. All eyes were turned upon him. 
' Stop !' repeated he, in a tone of authority. ' White woman, thou 
hast kept thy word with me to the last moment. I am the traitor. 
I have eaten of the salt, warmed myself at the fire, shared the 
kindness of these Christian white people, and it was I that told 
them of their danger. I am a withered, leafless, branchless trunk ; 
cut me down if you will. I am ready.' A yell of indignation 



A VILLAGE WITHOUT A XAME, 43 

Bounded on all sides. Naoman descended from the little bank 
where he sat ; shrouded his face with his mantle of skins, and sub- 
mitted to his fate. He fell dead at the feet of the white woman, 
by a blow of a tomahawk. 

'•But the sacrifice of Naoman, and the firmness of the Christian 
white woman, did not suffice to save the lives of the other victims. 
They perished — how, it is needless to say ; and the memory of 
their fate has been preserved in the name of the pleasant stream on 
whose banks they lived and died, which to this day is called 
Murderer's Creek." 

But this iudifference, as to name, seems to grow upon 
its banks. One of the most picturesque and lovely little 
villages in our country lies nestled in the bent arm of its 
outlet — and icithoiU a name ! The inhabitants cannot 
tell you where they live. To be sure, it is so in the 
bottom of a well — so down in the deepest cleft of the 
Highlands, that a bird would almost fly over without 
seeing it (buried in trees, too, for the gentlemen resid- 
ing there have charmingly respected them) ; but still 
newspapers and letters must come ; and theirs are 
addressed to the neighboring and smaller village of New 
Windsor. It is to this place without a name, as the 
nearest to my home, that I must, henceforth, properly 
belong. If it were but the beginning a little earlier to be 
forgotten altogether, one might ex-paragraph thither 
to be "lapt in elysium" — but whQe still liable to "obitu- 
ary notice," the lack of that ever-third word, "Died 



44 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

at ," might imply a careless disrespect. Shall we 

have a name to our village, dear Postmaster-General ? 
It is at the meeting of three streams of different magni- 
tudes — Hudson Kiver, Moodna Creek, and Idlewild Brook 
— and Moore's "Avoca" has become an understood 
designation for a meeting of waters. May we call it 
AvocA ? It would be descriptive as well as musical — 
useful too, for that sweet song might "well embody a 
tempting spirit of inhabitiveness. I will leave the sug- 
gestion upon echo. 



FARM LAND AND FANCY LAND. 45 



LETTER V. 

Ucasons for Neighbors moving Off— Morals of Steamboat Landings — Class tliat 
is giiulually talving Possession of the Iluilson — Tliougbt-property in a Resi- 
dence — llorizon-cloclv of Idlewild — Society for the Eye, in a Vi<\v. 

April 23, 1S53. 

I "NfET one of my neighbors yesterday, seated in his 
wife's rocking-chair, on top of a wagon-load of tools and 
kitchen utensils, and preceded by his boys, driving a troop 
of ten or fifteen cows. As he was one I had always 
chatted with, in passing, and had grown to value for his 
good sense and kindly character, I inquired into his 
movements with some interest. He was going (to use 
his own phrase) "twenty miles farther back, where a 
man could afford to farm, at the price of the land." His 
corn-fields on the banks of the Hudson had risen in value, 
as probable sites for ornamental residences, and with the 
difference (between two hundred dollars the fancy acre, 
and sixty dollars the farming acre) in his pocket, he was 
transferrino; his labor and his associations to a new soil 
and neighborhood. With the market for his produce 
quite as handy* by railroad, he was some four or five 
thousand dollars richer in capital, and only a loser in 



46 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

scenery and local attachments. A Yankee's pots and 
kettles will almost walk away on their own legs, with 
such inducement. 

There is another " alluvial deposit," however, besides 
Taste and Wealth, which helps to drive the farmer from 
the banks of the river. The steamboat landings occur- 
ring every few miles, are nests of bad company, and con- 
stant temptations to the idle curiosity of laborers and 
children. It is a gay sight — at least contrasted with 
plough and barn-yard — to see the " day boat " sweep up 
with twice as many inhabitants as the nearest village ; 
crowds of city-dressed people, leaning over the balus- 
trades, and the whole a gaily painted and confusedly 
fascinating spectacle of life and movement. Then the 
" evening boat," with her long line of lights, her ringing 
bells, and the magical glide with which she comes 
through the darkness, touches the wharf, and is gone ; 
the perpetual succession of freight-boats ; the equipages 
from the surrounding villages ; and all tlie " runners," 
coachmen, porters, and " loafers," who abound upon the 
docks, swarming the bar-rooms in the intervals of arri- 
vals, contribute to keep up an excitement, within reach 
of which a farmer's customary reliances are made vexa- 
tiously uncertain. He would scarce need more than this 
to make him seek a different neighborhood. But for 
once, the "money down" also pays virtue's expenses, and 



THE FARM AND ITS DOUBLE. 47 

it is not surprising that the migration of the river farmers 
to both cheaper lands and a more moral atmospliere, is 
general and lively. The " opening down the middle " of 
the Empire State's robe of agriculture, will soon be 
edged with velvet, and, for its common cloth, we must 
look to the sides and skirts, broad back and towering 
shoulders. A class who can afford to let the trees grow is 
getting possession of the Hudson ; and it is at least safe 
to rejoice in this, whatever one may preach as to the 
displacement of the laboring tiller of the soil by the 
luxurious idler. "With the bare fields fast changing into 
wooded lawns, the rocky wastes into groves, the angular 
farm-houses into shaded villas, and the naked uplands 
into waving forests, our great thoroughfare will soon be 
seen (as it has not been for many years) in something 
like its natural beauty. It takes very handsome men 
and mountains to look well bald. 

Yet the mover-back from the banks of the Hudson soon 
finds, probably, that he has sold more than he meant to 
sell. The farm that belonged to his thoughts has gone with 
the other farm. He has parted, unintentionally, with 
what he was daily in the habit of looking for, measuring 
time by, thinking about, and finding society in — the rail- 
trains and steamers, schooners and barges, sloops, yachts 
and lumber-rafts, of one of the most lively thoroughfares 
m the world. Stupidly enough, he had included all this 



48 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

in the ''scenery" — the mere trees, hills and running 
water, of which he expected to find plenty where he was 
going ! But a mere landscape — and a landscape alive 
with moving objects of beauty and interest — are very 
diflferent places in which even to be yourself solitary. 

It is to this blindness as to the un-fenccible property in 
a spot^ that Idlewild owes its name. It belonged to a 
valuable farm ; but it was a side of it, which, from being- 
little more than a craggy ravine — the bed of a wayward 
torrent — had always been left in complete wilderness. 
When I first fell in love with it, and thought of making a 
home amid its tangle of hemlocks, my first inquiry as to 
its price was met with the disparaging remark, that it 
was of little value — ^^ only an idle wild of which nothing 
could ever be made." And that description of it stuck 
captivatingly in my memory. ''Idle-wild!" "Idle-wild!" 
But let me describe what belongs to Idlewild, besides its 
acres of good-for-nothing torrent and unharvest-ablc 
crags, and besides the mere scenery around them. 

To begin with a trifling convenience, it supplies a clock, 
gratis. From the promontory on which stands my cot- 
tage, I see five miles of the Hudson River Kailroad, and 
two miles of the Kewburgh and Erie — a clock rimmed 
round with a mountain horizon, the loveliest of landscapes 
for a face, and half-mile streaks of smoke for the fingers. 
Once learn the startings of the trains, and every one that 



FEATURES OF THE LANDSCAPE. 49 

passes aauouuccs the time of day. The smoke-fingers 
serve also as a barometer — more or less white aud dis- 
tiuct, depressed or elevated, in proportion to the damp- 
ness of the atmosphere. It is something of a luxury also 
to be daily astonis/ied ; and I feel no beginning, at present, 
of getting used to seeing a rail-train slide along the side of 
a mountain — the swift smoke-tails of the Nowburgh and 
Erie cars slicing off the top of Skunnemunk several times 
a day, at an elevation of two hundred feet above the 
Hudson, and often, when there is a mist below or above 
it, looking more like a meteor shooting along the face of 
a cloud, than a mechanical possibility in which a mortal 
may take passage or send a parcel. To have these swift 
trams perpetually flying past, one on each side of the 
river, and meeting at right angles where the ferry-boat is 
seen continually to cross, varies a man's walk, even at the 
tail of a plough. 

But the two railways, though the most wonderful fea- 
tures of the movtnmvb in my landscape, are the least beau- 
tiful. The spread of the river above the pass of the 
Highlands (upon which I look immediately down), might 
be a small lake of four or five miles in extent, embosomed 
in mountains. This would be fine " scenery " to be solitary 
amidst, though the birds and the tree-tops were the only 
stirrers. But to be just as picturesquely secluded, as to 
personal remoteness, and still see the lake beneath my 

3 



50 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

lawn traversed daily by a hundred craft of one sort and 
another— steamers, tow-boats, sloops, rafts, yachts, 
schooners and barges — makes, as I said before, a different 
thing of solitude. I presume five thousand people, at 
least, pass daily under my library window ; and as one 
looks out upon the crowded cars and flotillas which bear 
such multitudes along, it does not require poetry, in these 
days of animal magnetism, to express hoAv the sense of 
society is thus satisfied. A man mingles in a crowd, or 
goes to the play, to satisfy the social craving which is 
irresistible — but he need not speak or be spoken to, to 
get rid of his lonely feehng altogether. He must have a 
certain amount of human life and motion within reach of 
his eye. And, just how near or distant these moving 
fellow-beings must needs be, to magnetize companionship 
into the air, would vary, probably, with each man's 
electric circle. Across the river and over to Skunne- 
munk is near enough for me. 



EVEKGUEENS. 51 



LETTER YI. 

Evergreen Independence of Seasons— Naturc'3 Landscape Gardening— Weak- 
ness as to Reluctance in Planting Trees. 

April 30, 1S53. 

"We are not particular about the coming of spring, at 
Idlewikl. It is impatiently waited for among shrub- 
beries and fruit-trees, and on gravel-walks only shaded in 
summer. But, lose yourself (as you may) in our water- 
fall wilderness, and you would not know April from 
June. It is a little seventy-acre world of rocks, foam- 
rapids, and pathless woods, the ground carpeted with 
unchanging mosses and ferns, and the thousands of ever- 
green trees — hemlocks and cedars, white pines and yellow 
pines, balsam firs, laurels and cypresses — in such majority 
that falling leaves are scarce missed. What with this, 
and a labyrinth of glen-depths where the windy gusts 
never reach, we only know winter by the snow — late 
autumn and early spring differing little from summer, or 
Inainly in temperature more inspiriting. 

It is, perhaps, additionally local, this nine-month sum- 
mer at Idlewild — owing partly, that is to say, to the pre- 



52 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

cipitous wall of mountains which partitions us off from 
the seaboard, and sends the east wind clean over, our 
heads without touching, so that the Boston flayed-alive- 
ishness* is no part of our climate — but I was trying to 
draw a picture, which, even without this, might be use- 
fully suggestive. An out-of-doors where there is no 
windy weather and no naked trees — a fir-glen, such as 
may be found, little valued, almost anywhere hereabouts 
— makes a honie for an invalid, with "the north" very 
materially softened. The eye needs its medicine. Sur- 
rounded by evergreen woods, we look out from our cot- 
tage windows, for instance, upon perpetual summer, as to 
foliage ; and it is healing, even to the lungs, in Decem- 
ber, to need reminding, half the time, that it is not June. 
Half the time, too, it is (if the newspapers are to be 
believed) "remarkable weather for the season," Two 
days out of three, in our usual winters, would be taken 
kindly by the ripening oranges of the tropics. Live but 

* This local experience is, perhaps, worth making another comment upon. 
There are those who may be interested to know that there is a mountain wall, 
so near the city as this, under shelter of which the sour and penetrating East 
Wind of the sea-board is never felt. It was the knowledge of this, by the emi- 
nent physician whose advice first brought me to this place, which induced his 
successful prescription. I have passed a whole winter on this Highland Ter- 
race, daily on horseback, and riding constantly over its ten-mile surface, with- 
out once feeling anytliing like the depressing and searching east wind so poi- 
sonously uncomfortable at Boston. The information may be of use to invalids. 



AN EXPERIMENT. 53 

near a sheltered fir-grove — where the sun draws the per- 
fume from the resinous bark, and the air is unreached by 
the wind — and, though a delicate invalid, you may pass 
half your January noons out of doors. Yet most persons 
choose exposed situations for country residences, and 
surround the house with elms, oaks, and maples — trees 
naked half the year. With a latitude of too many win- 
try months, but with a capricious climate, whose summer 
days, departed by the almanac, may be, any morning, 
back at our door, it is surely best, if possible, to be 
ready, at short notice, to realize them — to let it look as 
well as feel like summer — to see verdure and breathe per- 
fume, as well as glow with the warm air that commonly 
keeps perfume and verdure company. 

I am making an experiment at Idlewild — seeing how 
far a place can be improved by originating nothing — 
taking advantage only of what Nature has already done. 
I began by setting down my cottage amid an old wood, 
upon a site otherwise perhaps second best, instead of 
waiting twenty years for shade upon a spot with a better 
view. With groves all around us, and a half-mile avenue 
of hemlocks extending from the water's edge upon the 
Hudson to the gate up the brook, I have not yet planted 
a single tree. We go to ihem so much easier than 
they come to us. Here and there it begins to look 
rather expensively terraced — but those curious levels, in 



54 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

the precipitous sides of the raviuc, were Nature's own 
spread of her lap, and we have only smoothed down her 
gown. In the wildest rock chasms of our torrent brook, 
we have, now, two darkly-shaded lakes — cascades pour- 
ing into them, waterfalls pouring out of them — and you 
would scarce believe how little finishing it took to com- 
plete Nature's intended damming-up of the approaching 
crags at the outlets. For one great advantage, a road 
up the glen, we are indebted rather to accident — a 
former proprietor having built it at some expense, in 
a project to quarry slate — but, upon the edges of a track 
roughly hewn through underbrush, forty years ago, there 
are now rows of noble trees which look like large invest- 
ments of time and money. Perched on a hillside, we have 
a fish-pond, of crystal clearness, which you would also 
take for an expensive caprice, done with lead pipes and 
much round-about digging ; and that was a natural 
spring, of singular and unfailing abundance, known to all 
the vagrant boys of the neighborhood as the coolest and 
best water to be anywhere found, and which it needed 
but little work to " puddle round and stone up." With 
a tract of uneven surface, which has been left a long time 
idle and wild, it is surprising how you may thus need to 
strike but the thousandth blow, in the determination to 
complete only what Nature has struck nine hundred and 
ninety-nine at, before you. You get such large effects 



A FRANK AVOWAL. 55 

witli SO little labor — a cousideratiou, wlicre a shovel at a 
dollar a day moves dirt so slowly. 

I said, just 110 w, that I had not yet planted a single 
tree at Idlewild. This is half a betrayal of a weakness 
that I feel growing upon me ; and, having been reminded 
to-day of what I have once put in print from quite an 
opposite feeling, I may as well make a clean breast, and 
so, perhaps, get the better of it. In our current of life 
we have eddies of these quiet side-weaknesses — a string 
of them. At fourteen we begin to be secretly nervous 
lest our beard should be belated. Whiskers pretty well 
outlined, there awakens an unconfessed wonder and indig- 
nation that the world does not seem ready for our 
particular genius. Soon after, we are mortified that 
even our guardian angel, reading our hearts, should 
know how hard it is to smile with contempt because 
papas do not think us " a good match." The struggle of 
life comes ; and, with the current swifter and deeper, 
there is an interval, perhaps, when the eddies of secret 
weakness find no slack-water for play. But, that past, 
we begin to be sensitive about our age and our first grey 
hairs ; and when that is scarce over, there comes another 
feeling — the weakness that I speak of— the secret reason 
(though scarce before recognized and brought fairly to 
the light) why I have been two years moulding Idlewild 
into a home, and have not yet set out a tree. 



56 LETTERS FROM I D L E "W I L D . 

We dread being re?ninded of what is going to do just as 
well without us. The time of life for this feeling may be 
sooner or later, but it comes. We outlive it — for we see 
old men very fond of planting trees. But, with every 
willingness to look forward — death a gate to which we 
see our steps turning, and still go tranquilly on — the look 
backward has its pangs — pride-pangs — over and above 
the partings of affection. What we prize and admire 
that will not miss us — what will come to its beauty after 
we are gone — what will not need us to appreciate or 
point out its splendor, but will be looked at and loved 
as well when we have been long forgotten — of this we 
are reminded, oftener and more bitterly than we always 
like to own. We do not set up memorials of this kind 
without a sigh. To plant a tree is to do this — its growth 
slow, its maturity delaying, its full promise far off, while 
we are loosening hold, conscious of uncertain stay, sure 
to be soon gone beyond its shading. But I will try 
to-morrow. Trees should be growing here and there at 
Idlewild — whether or not I shall be here to see them in 
their beauty. 



FACILITY OF MIGRATING. 51 



LETTER yil. 

Earlier City Migration to the Country than usual— Peculiar Dignity-plant — Object 
o^ Country Farmers in taking City Boarders for the Summer — Suggestion as to 
City and Country Exchange of Uospitality. 

May 7, 1S53. 

Our nominal summer, in this region, dates from the 
period when the farm-houses receive their city boarders 
for the season ; and I find, by conversation with 
my neighbors on the road, that it is to commence this 
year a month earlier than usual. The engagement of 
rooms from the first of June, instead of the first of July, 
is so general as to be quite the leading topic of interest 
and curiosity. It is attributed partly to the rise of 
provisions and other expenses of living in New York, 
and partly to the growing taste of mingling country and 
city life. Differing from England in nothing so much as 
in the less value we set upon the individual home, there is 
a wonderful proportion of our respectable families who 
pass the winter at hotels and boarding-houses, and to 
whom rural migration is an easy and agreeable change. 
They have no residence to lock up or let. They strike 

3* 



58 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

tent as willingly as the Arab, whose nomadic taste the 
American seems to share. From pavements and operas, 
omnibuses and heated rooms, the change to green fields, 
quiet, and fresh air, is but the paying a bill and packing a 
trunk. 

But in this neighborhood — this Highland Terrace, ten 
miles square, lying in a half-bowl of mountains — " taking 
boarders " is not exactly what it is elsewhere. The 
difference is worth explaining — for it shows that dignity 
is a plant which may grow differently in one place 
and another, I have already complimented the locality, 
for its being so chance-formed, geographically, as to 
be entirely exempt from the sour east wind. Downing 
compliments it, in his horticultural writings, because the 
arhoi' vitce (the flat cedar), the most rare and curious of 
evergreens, is here the commonest shrub by the wayside. 
As the only climate where thrives a peculiar dignity- 
plant — the different feeling I speak of, as to taking 
boarders — ^it is, I think, equally to be complimented. 

" Board" and ''hospitality" differ, here, in nothing but 
the equivalent. For the entertainment given by our 
farmers to families from the city, during the summer 
months money is taken, instead of the usual return of similar 
hospitality, or the incurring of a debt of civility. In all 
other respects, it is an interchange of advantages between 
equals in social rank. The charges for board are very 



''money no object." 59 

moderate — pecuniary profit not being the acknowledged 
or main inducement on the farmer's part. lie does 
it, ostensibly and allowedly, to give his family the advan- 
tage of more extended intercourse, to see the world 
near-to, to dispose of his superfluities, and receive super- 
fluities in return — to furnish fresh air, beautiful scenery, 
fruits, flowers, and cordial welcome, without charge, and 
take for equivalent, such new notions of dress, views of 
passing topics, and observations of city manners and 
character, as may be gathered from the entertainment of 
city society under his own roof. For the greater exjpense 
it is to one party than to the other, in the carrying out of 
this agreeable interchange, a small rectifier is thrown in, 
in the shape of a bill. 

In other parts of the world — perhaps it will be granted 
— ^the taking of boarders, in some greater or less degree, 
involves the personal dignity and position. It is under- 
stood usually, as an admission of " reduced circumstances." 
The host and hostess preside at table rather to attend to the 
wants of those who sit with them than to share the meal. 
They are not included in the daily arrangements for 
amusement, do not enter a guest's room without some 
more definite reason than to lounge or chat, would not 
venture to nick-name or be playfully familiar, and, in all 
respects, preserve those formalities of language and man- 
ner which imply a barrier not to be overstepped. 



60 LETTERS FROir IDLEWILD. 

That all this is very different, in the Highlands between 
West Point and Newburgh, any one who has passed a 
summer here will readily admit. The families that receive 
from ten to thirty boarders are among the most respect- 
able in the neighborhood — farmers who do not, confess- 
edly (nor probably in fact), depend materially on taking 
boarders for a livelihood. The common price, indeed, 
would hardly be thought to clear expenses, if time and 
rent were taken into the account. But, while no pains 
are spared to make the visiters happy and comfortable, 
it is done with the joyous and cheerful stimulus of hospi- 
tality — the first comings in spring looked forward to with 
eager pleasure ; the parting adieu in autumn received with 
whatever friendly regret the guest's character and man- 
ners may have inspired. In the arrangements for excur- 
sions, in walks and drives, the family is as much included 
as their' own wishes and circumstances of mutual conve- 
nience would naturally bring about. At table and in the 
parlor, in doors and out of doors, there is as much social 
equality as between the boarders themselves. In the 
society of the country around, it is rather an addition to 
the dignity than otherwise, to take boarders in the sum- 
mer — showing competency to entertain and accommodate, 
and implying, of course, a polish from intercourse with 
strangers. 

Now, this really seems to me, I must say, a social 



*A SUGGESTION. 61 

novelty worth transplanting and propagating — worth copy- 
ing, even in the city. How many families there are in 
New York who have house-room to spare, and who, if 
their dignity and position U'cre not involved or lessened, 
would find both profit and pleasure in opening their doors 
to " boarders !" They might receive only such as came 
properly introduced or recommended. The chances of 
agreeable friends and " good society" might be as fair as 
in the ordinary course of forming acquaintances. House 
and furniture already provided, as in country board, there 
would be a profit at half the. price charged at hotels. 
Why, New York is a wilderness of unoccupied attention 
and unoccupied apartments, on which pride alone turns 
the key. Yet, if the hospitality for money were a little 
too startling at first, how many independent families there 
are who have country houses, between whom and those 
who have city houses hospitality might he exchanged — 
three months of summer board for three months of winter 
— and no pride hurt, but health, pocket, and love of 
change materially and reciprocally accommodated I 



62 LETTERSFROM IDL E^V I L D . 



LETTER YIII. 

Ownei'ship in Nature worth Realizing — Thumb-and-finger Nationality of Yan- 
kees — United Experience of Many, as expi-essed in a Common-minded Man's 
Better Knowledge — Lack of Expression and Variety in Gates — Pig-tight Gates. 

May 14, 1853. 

Spring is a beautiful piece of work; and not to be in 
the country to see it done, is the not realizing what 
glorious masters we are, and how cheerfully, minutely, 
and unflaggingly the fair fingers of the Season broider 
the world for us. Each April morning, to drop the reins 
upon the neck of your horse, and look, charmed, around, 
seeing that Nature did not go to bed, used up and tired, 
the night before, as yoii did, but has been industriously 
busy upon the leaves and blossoms while you were asleep 
— so much more advancedly lovely than yesterday — is, 
somehow, a feehng that has in it the bliss of ownership. 
The morning seems made for you. The fields and sky 
seem your roof and grounds. The air and sunshine, 
fresh colors and changing light — all new, and not a 
second-hand thing to be seen — nothing to be cupboarded 
and kept over for to-morrow, or for another guest — gives 



VANDALISM. 63 

a delicious consciousness of being the first to be waited 
on, the one it was all made and meant for. A city April, 
in comparison, is a thing potted and pickled, and retailed 
to other customers as well. 

And — speaking of green leaves — I have been vexing 
myself to-day over a thumb-and-finger nationality that we 
have. The Irish laborers, at work upon our cottage 
grounds, during the earlier season, have gone to and fro, 
without damage, intentional or unintentional, to what 
did not belong to them. Tiiey respect one's property in 
a tree as well as in a wall or a door. But, with the 
opening season, the mechanics — Americans, of course — 
have resumed tJieir labors on the unfinished building ; and 
the marks of their passings in and out are very different. 
They board among our neighbors around, and either 
way from the public road, on the river or the village 
side, the approach is through a long avenue of fir-trees. 
You may track them (seeing any day whether they have 
gone to dinner or not) by the broken twigs of fresh-green 
tassels upon the ground. They never pass near one of 
my beautiful hemlocks or cedars without refreshing the 
memory of their American thumb and finger as to its 
being a free country — breaking off a branch, slapping it 
once or twice against the leg as they walk along, and 
throwing it away. If it were grass, and only missed in 
the crop — or if their "bosses" milked them when they 



64 LETTERS FROM IDLETVILD. 

got home — I should say nothing. A trespass on pasture 
at least benefits the owner of the cow. But the dis- 
figuring of trees, whose every graceful spray, from the 
ground up, is part of an outline of proportion — destroying 
what nothing can restore, from a mere wanton non- 
recognition of any man's property in more ihan the fuel 
of a tree — is a thumb-and-finger Fourth of July which I 
must venture to wish somewhat abated. The young 
gentlemen, of course, intended no special annoyance to 
me. I would have spoken to them on the subject, but 
they would have understood it as an economy of fire- 
wood. The liberty they take is part of a national habit 
of mind. It is a pimple on the nose of the Repubhc, 
which must be reached by physicking through public 
opinion — not so rudely picked by any one individual as 
to make a pock-park memorial of his name. 

I daily acquire respect for an uneducated person's 
better knowledge of some things. In almost any practi- 
cal matter, it is a great saving of time to go first, and get 
a common-minded man's view of it. I wasted a good 
deal of thought and contrivance, lately, even on a matter 
of taste, by neglecting my usual first reference to this two- 
legged dictionary. I had been troubled about a gate. 
Architectural literature, somehow, seems strangely behind- 
hand and benighted on this subject, or perhaps there is 



THE ARCHITECTURE OF GATES. 65 

some work which treats of it with more particularity, and 
which I have not fallen in with — only I see no gates on 
the road, or in landscape embellishments, which would 
indicate the existence of such better authority. There is 
no variety of appropriateness in them. It seems to me 
that a gate should not only be absolutely convenient, but 
it should tell the story of what it leads to — and tell it 
modestly, like a place's speaking of itself to the passer-by. 
Gentlemen's gates in our country are very apt to brag. 
There is not near so much meat in the kitchen, or wine in 
the cellar, as they talk of. But there is, besides, an 
individualism icanting, in the construction of gates. We 
might well copy Nature. The expression of the mouth — 
Nature's gate to the stomach — gtows out of the charac- 
ter. Architecture should do the same thing — be able to 
furnish a man a plan for a gate to his house, on his send- 
ing a daguerreotype of himself. But, while there are 
thousands of kinds of people, there are only two or three 
kinds of gates — a poverty of adaptedness, which, as I said 
before, is behind the omnificent age we live in. 

I am straying from my point, however — ^having started 
only to speak of a working-man's better knowledge than 
mine, as to convenience in a gate. I had taken pencil and 
paper to bed (with a cough which keeps me sitting upright 
half the night, and which I turn to account by working as 
a cough-power to turn a waking-wheel on any subject that 



66 LETTERS PROM IDLEWILD. 

perplexes me) — and had spent hours in the combination 
of lines and curves to express what I wanted the entrance 
to my cottage to say. An autobiography that would latch 
and swing upon a hinge, was the amount of it — and I 
soon found that it was a kind of rehearsal of a grave- 
stone, that would require more study than I had thought 
for — but I went to sleep at last, over one that seemed 
tolerably successful. It looked well by the cool light of 
the next morning; and, making a clean drawing of it, I 
walked down into the glen and showed it to a laboring 
man by whose opinions I usually take the measure of my 
own. " Yes, sir," said he, after looking at it a moment, 
" iut it isn't pig-tight .'" I had quite forgotten that it was 
to keep out pigs as well as let in friends. It was too open 
at the bottom. The beauty of my frame-work — as long as 
pigs run loose — would be misplaced on a public highway. 
Of course I took back what I had thought disparag- 
ingly of other people's gates. They may have had 
reasons — pig-tight reasons of convenience — for doing as 
everybody else did. I gave up the idea of letting my 
own gate tell any particular story, and applied to the 
architect who built my house, for a plan of one. He 
drew it, as he does everything, well — but it does not look 
at all as if it led to 7?ie. There it stands, however, lead- 
ing to Idlewild. Friends will understand where it 
promises too much. 



A GOOD INVESTMENT. GT 



LETTER IX. 

Private Performance of Thunder-storms — Nature's Sundays— Marriage of Two 
Brooks — Funnychild's Deserted Bed. 

May 21, 1853. 

Queen Yictoria has private theatricals at Windsor — 
but I have a private performance of storms at Idlewild 
better worth coming to see. These players of Nature 
thunder over my two dams in the ravine, for twenty-four 
hours after pouring their deluges upon the mountains ; 
and water, foaming down through sunshine, and listened 
to without need of an umbrella, is as much more charm- 
ing than when performing where previously heard and 
seen, as a play is made more charming by the sunshine 
and privilege of a queen's presence. 

Nature, like love, costs money to appropriate and 
make the most of ; but I was musing, to-day — as I stood 
looking at the swollen sheet of last night's heavy rain, 
plunging over the closed-up chasm of one of our preci- 
pices^on the difference of value received for investments 
nominally equal. The building of the dam which changed 
those rapids into a waterfall of twenty feet, cost from 



08 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

twenty to thirty dollars — the price that will be paid for 
a private box, next winter, to see Cerito dance the Baya- 
dere. But that is the last of Cerito's legs for t/mt money, 
and here is my waterfall, as lively as ever, after six 
months of dancing day and night, and nothing extra to 
pay, either, for the "chorus and ballet" added to the 
performance by every thunder-storm that comes along. 
The cataract, moreover, after its twinkling feet have 
quivered in the air, comes down into the meadow and 
gives a drink to my horse and cow (an afterpiece you 
will not get from Cerito) ; and I go to see it when I like; 
on foot or on horseback ; in the morning mood of hope, 
or the evening mood of sadness ; with friends, or without 
them ; at dawn, or by moonlight; all winter and all sum- 
mer, and with the promise of the same performance for as 
many more winters and summers as come round to Idle- 
wild and me. A private cataract for a lifetime, or a 
private box to see a pair of legs for an hour — both per- 
formers dancing to music, but Xiblo and Nature the two 
managers, and both got up " with no regard to expense" 
— price twenty dollars for either. What would a newly- 
arrived angel think of a world where these two money- 
worths were set down as equal ? 

But the morning has been, in many ways, one of inter- 
est to me. The clearing off, after last night's heavy 
thunder, gave us a sunrise fit for Eden. There are such 



WEDDING OF THE WATERS, 69 

days — days when boys should be let out of school — the 
deliciousucss of the weather amountiug to a Sabbath — 
and this has been one of them. It was a happiness to 
live only. Mere breathing and seeing has been full of 
surprises. So new seemed the world ! Everything out 
of doors looked irresistibly bent on a holiday — birds 
merrier, leaves fresher, blossoms gayer-colored, sweet- 
smelling plants joyously prodigal of their fragrance. In 
the seasons when the leaves are on the trees, this kind of 
Sunday of Nature comes around once in aljout seven 
days, I have observed, though not with the exact regu- 
larity of the week in the almanac. And I think, too, 
that one's natural spirits instinctively follow this same 
rotation — the weary and cloudy Saturday of the soul 
coming round, followed by its bright Sunday of repose 
and Monday of better courage. We are all happy, some- 
times, we know not why. May we not oftenest put it 
down to this inward seventh day's rest, and renewal of 
the joy of existence, keeping time with Nature ? 

To marry two brooks was my errand out of doors this 
beautiful morning. The meadow-lawn, two hundred feet 
below our cottage-windows, is the junction-porch of two 
converging glens — Idlewild and Home-shut — and each has 
its brook, brought from far-apart sources, but joining 
lips within our fence upon the Hudson. Both gleu-open- 
ings being included in one tangled domain, the road out, 



70 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

towards Newburgh, makes a bend arouud the meadow, 
crossing below the projecting promontories of the two ; 
and, as we must needs, of conrse, traverse their two 
streams, it was desirable to bring them a little sooner 
together, and span their united waters with one bridge. 
It required some digging and damming — Funny child (the 
other brook), after all manner of noisy vagaries in its 
own glen, coming out to coquet capriciously with the 
swells of the meadow, and shieing Idlewild just where 
Nature intended they should meet to part no more — but 
we made the new bed some days ago, and only waited for 
a thunder-storm, it being an object to remove the ban'ier 
just when the swollen flood might give a more natural 
turn to their meeting. I should mention that Home-shut, 
though directly opposite my study window, is a glen so 
intricately out of the way that no chance foot would ever 
cross it ; and, from its close-wooded entrance of hemlocks, 
the demure stream, so sunny and merry the moment after, 
comes out like a veiled nun out of the dark porch of a 
cathedral — Funnychild being also a rivulet of capricious 
stay, and disappearing (gone to the sjprings, perhaps), 
for two months of the year. 

But we brought the two together — breaking down the 
barrier — with the startling celerity that makes one gasp 
at most weddings — ^though, from the way they took to 
each other's bosoms, you would have thought they had 



THE DESERTED BED. 71 

never been anywhere else. The long bother of our pre- 
parations, indeed, seems to have been time wasted. Away 
they went, along Idlewild's every-day track, astonishing 
the old trees, no doubt, with the freer fingering of the banks 
by the rising ripples, but making everything look brighter 
and fresher. It will be a happy union, I think. Idle- 
wild staying all the year, Funnychild will not be so much 
missed in her summer absences. Only her deserted bed 
looks a little melancholy — but that we must cover and 
forget. I shall remember this glorious morning and its 
pretty bridal, I am sure, as long as I haunt hereabouts. 



12 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD 



LETTER X. 

Making a Shelf-road— Cliaracter shown in Wall-lajing — By-thc-Day and By- 
the-Job — English Literalness and Yankee "Gumption." 

May 23, 1853. 

In the making of a sbelf-roacl around one of the preci- 
pices of Idlewild (something Hke the way to a hanging- 
bird's nest when we began, but, at present, the winding 
and easy access to the cottage from the N'ewburgh side) 
— we have had a larger amount of wall-laying than has 
entered into my previous out-door experience ; and I have 
taken a lesson in it, of which, perhaps, I can say an 
instructive word or so. My friend, the builder, will not 
take the alarm, I hope. I would not rashly invade his 
art and mystery. I refer, not to mason-work proper — 
such as is done with trowel and hammer, plumb-line and 
spirit-level — but to such laying up of loose stones by the 
hand as is done for common day wages, though usually by 
the smarter class of laboring men. 

My study of the matter was by way of understanding 
the preferences of two of my "hands" who seemed 
equally industrious — one wishing to work by the day, 



A LESSON IN WALL-LAYING. 13 

however, and the oUicr to be paid by the rood. As they 
were both old at the business, I thought it must he rather 
a difference of natural character thau of skill or profit — 
in cither case, a difference worth understanding — and, as 
the weather was of the kind that throws us upon our- 
selves for amusement, I put on my mittens, and, as the 
farmers say, "took hold" with my men. 

Our way, that morning, lay through a group of largo 
hemlocks ; and, by the inexorable level of carriage-road 
grading, the noblest tree was undermined on the lower 
side. To soothe the old monarch — build a wall that would 
hold up the fresh earth once more around the exposed 
roots — I took for my first experiment at stone-laying. It 
may not deepen the shade of the old tree, perhaps, to 
have done this myself ; but I shall enjoy it more from 
having made sure of my welcome to it. 

One is a better judge of most work by having had 
some little apprenticeship at it, and, by what I found diffi- 
cult or easy in my own handling of the material, I soon 
began to see the difference between my friends By-the-day 
and By-the-job. By-the-day worked much the hardest. 
He lifted two or three stones before he got hold of the 
right one, held this between his knees while he decided 
where he would lay it, and twisted it round two or three 
times after he had got it in place. By-the-job was a little 
longer lookino: at the fresh cart-load before making his 

4 



^4 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

selection, but the taking the stone up, and setting it in its 
place, was usually but one movement; or, he gave it a 
turn in the air with his upward lift, brought the proper 
face of it to the front with one effort of mind and hand ; 
and, once dropped into the line of the wall, that stone was 
done with. If it was not a fit (though it generally was), 
he had given it its proportion of look and Uft, and the 
next one must remedy the defect — prop or overlay it. 
He built as good wall, on the whole, as the other man, 
seemed to be taking it very easy in comparison to the 
other's hard work, and got on a trifle faster. The differ- 
ence, I saw, consisted in thoroughly deciding on every 
movement before it was made, making it promptly, and 
wasting no time in reconsiderings. If I had been a 
casual observer, I should have thought By-the-day was 
the more industrious and better man. By-thc-job would 
be my preference, after thus seeing them closer. 

But I must record my own success in wall-laying — 
rounding the corners of the rough-edged apology to the 
old hemlock. " He who exults in himself," says the elder 
D'lsraeli, " is at least in earnest; but he who refuses to 
receive that praise in public for which he has devoted so 
much labor in his privacy, is not ; for he is compelled to 
suppress the very instinct of his nature." I must record, 
therefore, that I was praised by both my fellow-workmen 
■ — By-the-day and By-the-job. They agreed it was a neat 



A S r A D E NOT A SHOVEL. 75 

piece of work. And (to unbutton a little more towards 
where it touched me) it is very delii^htful, after one's 
biography is written (and the Ilev. Dr. Cheever wrote 
mine twenty years agoj, to discover that one has a talent 
that has been entirely overlooked — a superiority that, in 
the hurry of life, has lain dormant and unsuspected. My 
next biographer will please mention, that, with proper 
advantages, I should probably have been a first-rate layer 
of stone wall. 

3fC 3fC 3fC ^p ^ ^C 

And — talking of working men — I was amused, a few 
days since, with a contrast as to treatment of obstacles, 
between two who were working for the same wages — 
worth describing, because it illustrates with some truth 
the difference between the common American mind and 
the common European. We were preparing to throw 
our bridge across Idlewild Brook. A quiet little narrow- 
shouldered American, with my horse hitched to a drag, 
was drawing stone for the road-way beyond, and a broad- 
shouldered fellow from the old country was digging earth 
to fill in. As I stood looking on for a moment I saw a 
thrifty little cedar, which had been partly uprooted ; and, 
requesting the digger to set it upright, and shovel some 
dirt around it, I walked on. Returning a few minutes 
after, I saw my cedar erect enough, but its roots still 
exposed. " Why didn't you cover it with dirt ?" I asked. 



16 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

" Sure, sir," said sturdy Great Britain, with a look of 
most honest regret that he had not been able to oblige 
me, " you told mc to shovel it, and I had no shovel." He 
was working with a spade ! 

It was not ten minutes after this, that I saw my little 
Yankee doUar-a-day unhitching the horse from the drag. 
" What are you going to do V I asked. " Why, there 
is no more stone to be got on this side," he said, " and 
that carpenter don't seem to be coming along to fix this 
bridge. I thought I'd step over and get What's-his- 
name's oxen and snake them timbers up, and then haul 
'em across with a block and tackle, and put on the planks. 
I could draw stone from the other side, then." Here was 
a quiet proposal to do what I looked forward to as quite 
a problem, even for a professed mechanic. I had be- 
spoken a carpenter for the job, three weeks before. 
There stood the two abutments six feet high and twenty- 
five feet apart, and a stream swollen by a freshet and 
hardly fordable on horseback rushing between : and how 
those four immovable timbers, thirty feet long, were to 
be got across, without machinery and scaffolding to span 
this chasm of twenty-five feet, I was not engineer enough 
to see. It was among the " chores that a man with com- 
mon gumption could do, easy enough," however, as my 
little friend said, and it was done the next morning, with 
block and tackle, rollers and levers — he going about it as 



Y A N K E E I N G E N U I T Y . 7t 

naturally and handily as if he had been a bridgc-builder 
by profession. There being no higher price, for day- 
labor with his amount of "gumption" and day-labor 
such as the other manh, who could not conceive how a 
spade might be used for a shovel, shows how common a 
thing ingenuity is, in our country, and how characteristic 
of a Yankee it is to know no obstacle. It was worth 
recording, I thought. 



tS LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD 



LETTER XI. 

Plank Foot-bridge over the Ravine— Its Hidden Location — Value of Old-man 
Friendships — Friend S. — His Visit to the Bridge — His Remembrance of Wash- 
ington — Tobacco Juice on Trees to Prevent Horse-biting, Ac, &c., 

June 14, 1853. 

I TOOK a jump, to-day, the full length of a quiet obser- 
vation made to me by a venerable old man, and the start- 
ling effect upon my imagination reminded me how rarely 
we do this — how seldom we are eager or ready for a 
thought that is presented to us, wiUing to fly where it 
leads the way, understand fully all it points to, and see 
it fairly home again with a responsive look or word before 
half forgetting it. Of such listening, it is true, every soul 
liable to be saved is not equally worthy, even in a repub- 
lic ; but my friend's remark and its bearings (like mucli 
that he daily looks and says), are worth more than my 
best attention ; and I will venture therefore to weave 
this and what belongs to it, into my chronicle of every- 
day happenings. 

Over a part of the ravine of Idlewild hitherto almost 
wholly inaccessible — a winding chasm between two sheer 
precipices, tumultuously filled below with a succession of 



THE IIIDD EN P ATH . , 79 

foam-rapids — I had felled a couple of trees ; and, with 
bits of rough board, formed a passable bridge, to which, 
by dint of pick-axe-iug, I had ridged a pathway, aslant 
down the face of the rock. As no strolling foot would 
ever find the tangled way thither without a guide, I 
kept it for such visitors as I thought loved nature well 
enough to appreciate its covert wildness and beauty ; 
and, for the eight months past, this flying bridge has been 
my finger-twist of free-masonry — the secret of Idlewild, 
which I revealed to those on whom ray heart turned no 
key. So enchanced was the beauty of this by the snows 
and swollen torrents of winter, that I kept a pair of high- 
legged water-proof boots (as my friend Pike of the Tri- 
hune will remember), in which I embarked any beloved 
visitor who I thought should see it, weather or no ; and 
though these were not many, the path was usually trace- 
able — a kind of out-door memorial that the snows of the 
wintriest storms will show the footprints of friends. 

My neighbor S would have been one of the first to 

be taken to a haunt thus confidential ; but, as he is 
eighty years of ago, and the path rather a giddy one, I 
had deferred it till some bright day should find us 
together near the spot. I may mention perhaps (feel- 
ing to-day, somehow, as if the world were to be trusted), 
that he is one of those Providential gifts in a country 
neighborhood, an old man at leisure for a friendship. 



80 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

This is a Inxnry, that, through life, I have looked for and 
found delightful. Sunsets and sunrises glow alike. The 
heart is warm after life's day's-work is over, as before it 
beirins — after the harness of manhood is laid off, as before 
it is put on. The love generally felt for genial and kindly 
old men, with their unselfish sympathies, their tried judg- 
ment, and their half-mournful tenderness towards those 
they are soon to leave, has not been enough remembered 
in poetry. Their calm and reliable affection is the Indian 
Summer of our friendships. 

Strangers will tie their horses to the trees from which 
I can least spare the bark they eat off while their masters 
are rambling about, and I had just been washing the 
trunks of two or three evergreens with tobacco-juice (said 
to be a six-months' disguster for the worst kind of crib- 
biter), when neighbor S , with his white locks flowing 

over his shoulders and his calmly genial face beaming 
from under his broad-brimmed hat, drove down the avenue 
— a moving picture among the beautiful cedars and hem- 
locks that made them more beautiful than before. As it 
was one of those inspiriting days of May, with adoles- 
cence in the leaf-coaxing breeze, I thought it a good time 
to tax my friend's knees of fourscore v/ith a scramble to 
my hidden bridge, the path to which opened from the 
thicket near by. He readily assented. We tied his 
horse to one of the tobaccoed cedars (which the fine 



A TABLEAU V I V A N T . 81 

animal, a splendid bay, opened teeth upon, and imme- 
diately backed off to the length of his halter, taking an 
attitude of repugnance in which we found him on our 
return), and then successfully made our winding descent 
to the chasm. 

As he stood upon the bridge, the old man was the un- 
conscious centre of a tableau vivant of great beauty. The 
rapids came down in four or five foaming leaps, apparent- 
ly from the sky above — flew, in a glassy and glittering 
sheet, beneath his feet — and, with another twisted foam- 
jump below, dashed into a dark lake almost walled in from 
the reach of the sun at noon. There is not a spot of 
wilder loveliness in the world ; and the venerable figure 
and presence of him who stood silently in its midst, gave 
it the soul for which the landscape-painter invents figures, 
thus centralizing the beauty of the scene. 

" I was here once before," said the old man, waking 
from his reverie. " It was when I was sixteen years old. 
We lived in the village above, and a freshet carried away 
some of our machinery. I remember climbing along this 
wild chasm in search of it." 

The double picture thus suddenly presented to my mind 
— that same person standing there sixty-four years ago, 
a slight stripling then ; and now a white-haired old man, 
bent and venerable — chance-brought to the same spot 
once more — his memory at the moment, looJdng at the scene 

4* 



82 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

through the vista of a life-time, — was a strong call upon the 
imagination. The two currents — the wild one beneath 
him, and the life-blood at his heart, had met before and 
parted to meet again after so long a lapse of years — each, 
meantime, forgetful of the other, fulfilling its vicissitudes 
of fulness and feebleness ; but his lessening now and pre- 
paring to change its channel and flow through eternity ; 
while the other, rejoicing now in strength undiminished, 
is to cease when the world shall end — the slender thread 
of that old man's existence to outlast the thundering tor- 
rent by myriads of ages — what a parallel for the fancy to 
follow through ! Yet the half-musing remark which 
stirred it might have been lost upon attention carelessly 
given — might have been drowned in the noise of those 
deafening waters. What interminable aisles of thought 
and instruction thus open upon our commonest pathway, 
the dim doors of which we scarce notice as we pass 1 

Mr. S is my next neighbor up the Valley of the 

Moodna ; and, along the road that runs between his house 
and the woods of Idlewild, he once overtook a slow- 
pacing horseman, who, with bridle dropped before him, 
was lost in thought. He was himself a small boy, going 
to mill with a bag of corn ; and, as his horse gradually 
outwalked the other, he had full leisure to study the looks 
of the slow rider. Boy as he was, the face and mien of 
that fellow-traveller on the same common road made an 



REMINISCENCE OF WASHINGTON. 83 

indelible impression ou bis memory. It was General 

Washington, then making the bouse wbich Mr. S now 

occupies, his bead-quarters. Forge Hill, as it was called — 
the smithy of the army — was just in the rear, and the 
bouse occupied by General Lafayette was a little farther 
up the stream. Beyond the bill, stands the picturesque 
old mansion where General Knox was, for some time, 
quartered, now occupied by Mr. Morton. Our neighbor- 
hood is, historically, most interesting — Mr. S 's remin- 
iscences of bis boyhood, and its cvery-day contact with the 
rc^' ers in that great drama, are so simply and truthfully 
told as to have a wonderful reality. His description of 
Washington, as he appeared to bis boyish eyes — (looked 
upon with a certain strange awe and reverence, be says, 
by the inhabitants and people around) — would be an 
invaluable portrait of the great Father of bis Country, if 
it could be copied from those gentler tones by pen or 
pencil. The gallery of memory at Idlewild will be graced 
by many of these word-pictures, sketched by this venerable 
old mau — pictures lasting in the minds that receive them, 
but untransferable, in their full beauty, to others. 



84 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER XII. 

Foliage and its Wonders — Caprice of Tree-living — Auto-verdure of Posts — 
Hemlock, the Homestead Emblem, &c., Ac. 

June 11, 1S5S. 

I HAVE hitherto known June as rather a belated month 
— seldom out in its full bulk and beauty of leaves till the 
second or third week. We have had it now, in what 
would pass for its sufficient glory, since the middle of 
May. As it was to decide some of my experiments of 
taste, I have watched it more closely than usual, and its 
early advent was particularly welcome. The thinning of 
groves and clearing out of underbrush — work at which I 
was busy for a great part of the winter — seemed some- 
times to have impoverished the woodland beyond its 
power to rally. It is hard to keep up one's faith in 
foliage, during its absence. The bare trees looked as if a 
miracle alone could re-clothe them as abundantly as they 
certainly were clothed by the last summer, and one's 
cuttings and loppings seem to have needlessly lessened 
' the probability. Who ever looked through the scattered 
branches of a tree in winter, and understood how it could 



CAPRICE OF NATURE. 85 

be so close-leaved in June as to be the mass of shadow 
that it becomes — impervious to sight, almost impervious 
to sunshine ? Nature is, certainly, wonderfully prodigal 
in her fulfillings. The promise of spring is kept beyond 
all expectation— a season of astonishments — morning after 
morning— the more startUng from its contrast with the 
short-coming-dom that reigns in most else. One hurries 
out of bed at daylight, Hvmg in the country in such a 
season as this, eager to see what changes have taken 
place overnight in the landscapes growing beautiful 
around. 

But jS'ature is a little wilful withal. She seems deter- 
mmed that Idlewild shall stay the wilderness that she 
made it — owing no tree, at least, to my planting. And, 
after a half-dozen vain attempts, I have let it alone. 
There are trees enough. Some of them do not stand 
quite where landscape gardening might fancy. But I 
beUeve I will keep it to say, that Nature had her own 
way about it altogether. Some of her caprices are 
curious. In laying a plank, last November, from the 
fork of a willow to a crag on the other side of our torrent- 
brook, I sawed off a limb of the tree, perhaps thirty feet 
long, and left it upon the rocks. Strolling through the 
glen, in the early spring, I noticed that this amputated 
branch was budding from one extremity to the other — 
touching the earth nowhere, but drawing moisture from 



86 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

an elbow-bend in one of the branches which had fallen 
across a tuft of moss in a fissure of the crag. There 
were my hemlocks, which, with men and oxen, I had 
transplanted, roots and all, dying in the moist and genial 
bed I had made for them ; and here was this stray waif, 
that nobody asked to live, and with no reasonable means 
of Hving, as lively, after six months, as the tree it was 
cut from ! I showed it to Morris, my brother quill, the 
other Sunday that he was here ; but, though he is a man 
to find an excuse for almost any perversity, he could only 
shake his kindness-box uncomprehendingly over this. In 
some cart-loads of chestnut posts I find the same auto- 
verdure embedded in stone wall, with only one end stand- 
ing flat on the surface of the ground ; half of them are in 
full leaf, along the river-side, at this hour I Sap, like 
love, seems " bent on steering with its cargo to consignees 
not named in the papers for that voyage." 

With this fertilizing May — the best mixed successiox* 
of rain and sunshine for many a year — the deciduous trees 
so jumped into leaf, and were, all of a sudden, so prodi- 
gally massive and shady, that I began to think I had 
over-valued our wilderness of firs, declaring Idlewild, as I 
did, to be independent of changing foliage in the prepon- 
derance of its woods of evergreen. The maples and 
chestnuts, oaks, dogwoods, and willows, quite smothered us 
with their Spring-burst, I must own. But June, with its 



THE BEAUTY OF HEMLOCKS. 87 

new dress for my slighted hemlocks, has brought me 
round again, and (till taken again by surprise, at least) 
I shall be inconstant no more. Hemlocks are our pride 
at Idlewild. How wonderfully beautiful they are now — 
every finger-tip of their outspread palms thimbled with 
gold, and every tree looking as if all the sunsets that had 
ever been steeped into its top were oozing out of it in 
drops. Of all Nature's renewals, I think this is the 
fairest. The old foliage forms such effective contrast for 
the new. The child-blossom and its predecessor are 
heightening graces, each to the other — neither so beauti- 
ful alone, and both finding room enough and enjoying the 
same summer together. Parent and child are one glory. 
The home-tree was not stripped and deserted for the new 
comer. Of that most precious of our wayside religions — 
the homestead-hallowing — ^it seems to me that the hem- 
lock should be the chosen emblem. 



8M i. WTT It; II M K II <• M I M I. K W I I. I> 



LMTTKU XIII. 

NiMHi VIpIIiiI'h III H)'(^iirr>' 'I'lio Hull Kinu itl dm (litd^ IihmiiviIiIi'IiI <l|iPttU»ff 
• •r n h|i|'liitf Krutl (litilnnlly iiinl IiiIuIIIkoiioii - I'ruoomi nf Aiiliiiitl i'lUKloii* 
Hluit, Ao,, .«!>. 

./«fM IN, INNI. 

I i.ttNOKM l<> Iiivi'mI II ImiII Iroi* willi tin nlllcn l(><liiy. 
'rill' ::|i)iir III' Mil iipoii rJiiMllil lliivc lirni liiy |iii|'l rt'';l l«i(|p^(«, 
mill lir ;.liiuilil liiiv(^ rspliiiiKMl, lit II ciiri'iiifj.'i* IoimI of 
fJl^ritlliMiiiMi mill liulirri, lliiit Niiliiic, iil Hint liiiUMtJ' diiy, 
wuM " Mill (IrrMHi'tj lo rrfcivt' «M»iii|iiiiiv." Wliy, il wiirt 
juat upun ninth ! ninl lliriiMlrovr ii|)ii piniy nl' tilnui^orH, 
ill It Ni'wliiir^'h liiU'K. who liiiil rit|il(» OV(M' lo i.rr Idlcwilil 
N«)| 11 riliiiilow on llio litnil'.riipr | llillsi<li> miil iiiriiilo\N, 
|)riM-t|iii'o mill |iluiii, lilanlvrliMl iiliKo willi ono f.>;liir(> nC 
MUUMlnnr. ilill miil rrlirlliv. i lillrwilil Wili lliiTi", il i;ilrni', 
v\c\'\ Iri'o mill v\vy\ rm-lv ; mul ;:o im " ( 'liilili' lliirolil" 
in 11 |»orKrl (lirlionmy (»vi'ry woiil of il Ami llii'|iorin 
nmv Im< ii|>|»i"«M'lal(Ml l»y riiiiil»!iiii'; lln^ tliclionm'y wIkm'cIu 
HIT nil ilH wonlM Hnil mit</if Ix' |inl lorrllirr, n.-i \\»>ll mm 
mMMUM'v l>v lM>ln^ vIsIUmI wlim ils li^hls mid mIiiuIowm urn 
1)11 iinlinKiMl. Nnliirt' i^doos ovoryl»*»»l.V Know il or iiol t) 
pourn on! Iirr »'liiiiii|>!»i',iu' ol' '>("inily Iwicr ii {\\\\ nt 



A U K A HO N I N n I' l( «) ti , 



KU 



iMitnmi;': iiml fM-iim;.'; mid nl iinoii ll In Ntaliv \ rl lunv 
fuNliinimlily liiiicd iiii rMiifMiini in pjrllin^' nwnv «'(HMrort 
ulily nil liinir or l\\<» iillcr ItiMMikfuHl, iitul I'rl iiiiuii|.': I»» 
ilitiiii'i' IniNiiiir iiloiii' nil lln'ijiiwii iiiul N(iii:irl, llir mIiiI'- 
li^'lil iiiul iin>(inliy;||( , lt> (•///('// sii-iiri 1/ (nun fi'n fi// tira ! 
j^ -1. ■ % ■ t, 

'V\\v lio'j I wiiM ill citiiiiiMin Willi, III (lin nioiiuiii w jicji 
tluvsr vi.siloi'M ptisNiMl in, Jiiul IuIvimi ri'liijj.r rioiii llir iiiiil 
diiy Niin, hy N«(Uiillin^ diiTctly timicr my inu Kiilr llm 
|)ri'|iriiilii'iiliit' nIiiuIow nl' lite In lili licuiii jii .1 iiiuUiti^' a 
M<|iiiir(« ciivci'liil I'lM' III I liiirlv Tlir ^'itl«^ liciiif.'; i|uitr iiii 
iirrlil(<>*'liit'iil iill'iiii', iiikI oI' m Mlyl(« .sonii'whiit l>(\Y<>ti<l <iiy 
woi'lilly roiitlil ion, I wni MWiillowiii^'; llii« iiun'iliil)io /IsNop 
of lilulin^' MliN cluSNic (Mlll>lrlll of over llll|llili«l||HII('NH NOiitod 
lUst tlu'tt' Itiil I wilt liilrrrsl(Ml, iit llio miiiio (iiiio. In 
H)»>rulidliip: «»ii I III' iii.'.liiu'l M of my tToiilviiii'- IVinid, in 
rtMiiiri-lioii uilli lli(> (iirumMhiiuMvi wliicli liiid rvit|(Milly 
l»r<)Uf;,lil Imii lo Mil' Niiol III* \vi»;i on ii vi.-iil of im|iMry. 
A |)lii'iionii'iioii liiid oiriirri'd wliuli liiid i>\i'ilr<i iiiri 
j'lirio.ilv I Knew llu" IVo^- well, llii remiiiividtlr hV/.v 
liMil nllniili'd my idlcnlion nirly in llio Nprin^' ; iind mm I 
liiid invMi'iiilijy stM'ii liiiii on puMMinfr Hip poDJ iit llm mJiIo of 
llip roiid, llilrly oi* foity rodn hrlow, wlii-n' lip lialiihiidly 

IM^sidrd, i «'oiild iio| wrll lir mid iilvcii in iii;l idrlitity, 
TIk* rviMil wliiili liiiil lii'on^;lil. hint iiwny IVoiii Iioiiip wmh 
('iiiioiiM in ilMrH'; llioiitdt I do mil. Know Mini I ilioidd 



90 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

venture to describe it witli such particularity if it were 
not for the grounds it furnishes in Natural History, in 
support of the "progressive theory." This frog reasoned 
— and is, of course, on his way to down with his thighs 
and swing his arms like a gentleman. 

In shaping the entrance to Idlewild from the Xewburgh 
side, I had thought it worth while, at some cost of 
digging, to go in behind a magnificent cluster of fir- 
trees — not only because the main gate on the river would 
be thus set in a picturesque frame of evergreens, but also 
because, over the shoulder of the hill, the road would 
descend into a grove, old and beautiful, giving the visitor 
and his horses a welcome of shade. After several days' 
working into the steep sand and gravel — (a dry and 
obstinate old hill, it seemed to me, to be part of a planet 
that moves through space so easily) — my Irish persuaders 
came suddenly to a stand-still. The slope they were 
pick-axe-ing began to tremble like a jelly. A little 
shovelling, right and left, and the quicksand broadened 
and grew softer — water began to run — the dry soil 
caved in from above, and a large mass of liquid earth 
commenced a slow procession down hill. We had 
intercepted an abundant water-course, which has its 
natural issue on the other side of the road, forty or fifty 
feet below. Nothing could be more agreeable, of course, 
than a hill which would walk away of its own accord — 



A L A N D - S L I D E . 01 

provided it went in the right direction. But my destiny, 
in all matters of mere dirt, is perversely ordered. Base 
things have the charge of my not loving the world too 
well. My charming new road was, in one night, entirely 
choked up and smothered in mud — a new wire fence un- 
settled and sent tumbling down — gateway obstructed, 
and every sign of no end to it. Patches came down, as 
large as a breakfast room, with young trees all standing, 
and grass growing — part of them, too, from ray neigh- 
bor's lot, across the hue. It occurs to me, as I write, by 
the way, whether I should have put ray neighbor's trees 
in the pound, for trespass. Or, if his land moves over 
the line by locomotion of its own, does it become mine ; 
or, if not, is he bound to come and take it away ? There 
are nice questions for law, in these land-slides. 

But — we managed, at last, to get the better of our 
Water-wilful — decoying its flow around the bend of the 
road by a "blind ditch," and walling up its outlet of 
quicksand behind a solid embankment. It is a fine 
" capability," thrown away — for, issuing from the over- 
hanging acclivity just within the gate, its plentiful and 
bright water might rain over the lip of a sculptured vase 
— a charming first feature for the entrance to an Italian 
villa, or to a cultivated garden, but too artificial for a 
rocky wilderness like Idlewild. I have given it a si^rig 
or two of weeping willow, to moisten into curtains for 



92 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

my gate — (a little job of upholstery which a running 
brook takes but a year or two to do) — and, when the 
pendent branches droop luxuriously enough to call the 
attention of the passer-by, other minds, even less observ- 
ing and inquiring than my neighbor the bull-frog, will 
wonder at signs of water on a promontory so high and 
dry. 

Yes — and I believe Neighbor B (bull-frog) did 

observe the new phenomenon ; and did wonder ; and cer- 
tainly did make an express journey, three or four hundred 
yards along a dry and un-amphibious-able road, up a hill 
and on a warm day, to look into it, for his own merely 
intelligent satisfaction. He crossed from my gate to the 
new mud-puddle in the corner (as I saw him do) — 
dropped into his contemplative angle of forty-five degrees, 
and sat reflecting in the very centre of the sloppy ooze 
for perhaps half an hour (as I thought it worth while to 
stop and see), and, returning home towards evening (as 
I happened to be there to make sure of), made himself 
into an easy-chair with his knees high up and his stomach 
for a cushion (as no other gentleman animal of my 
acquaintance can), and sat in his accustomed place, 
among his lively little family of tadpoles, probably specu- 
lating (as an old magazine editor might do over PiUnam)^ 
on the effect this higher breakout might have, in inter- 
cepting the flow of his circulation. It was a wonderful 



PROGRESSION A LAW OF NATURE. 93 

ucw issue, but it might be a more elevated tap of the 
supply, for his puddle, after all ! 

To returu to the science of the matter, there really 
seems to me to have been, here, sufficient proof that a 
frog can observe, is capable of curiosity, and will, though 
driven by no instinct of immediate necessity, take pains 
to be better informed on a subject that interests him. 
Why, to have gone thus out of his element, and by such 
use of his limbs as shows them to the least advantage — 
ascend a dry hill where probably a frog was never seen 
before — visit a new moisture-land, and return the same 
day — it was Columbus-y I I cannot shut my eyes to such 
proof of enterprise and intelligence in a neighbor. It 
cannot be that reason so advanced can stop there — or 
that such a frog is not on his way to become a man. 

Neighbor B is, in my opinion, one of a series — 

perhaps the " first number" of an angel — at all events, as 
suggestive of progression* as many a man that votes for 
President. I respect him. I commend him to the notice 

* It is in the structure and physical development of the frog, by the way, 
that we have the most encouraging and interesting proof of progression as a 
law of Nature. No other animal has such wonderful changes in his actual body 
and in a single stage of existence. It is hard not to be sceptical as to the dis- 
posal of a monkey's tail, for instance, if he is to become a man capable of salva- 
tion, or as to the changes that must take place in some men before they can be 
any way passable as angels— yet how much easier it is to conceive what im- 
provements may take place in the worst and ugliest of us, when we read in 



94 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

of visitors to Idlewild. He sits upon a stone, by a small 
pool of spring-water, on the meadow-shore of the Moodna, 
just where you turn Sloop-IIill, and get a first view of 
my cottage chimney. He dives usually towards noon 
It gets too warm. But he seems to have the same feel- 
ings as I, that Idlewild is in its beauty with the sun is 
the East (the meadows and slopes velveted with dewy 
shadows), and you would scarce fail to see us both, 

B and me, by driving that way an hour after sunrise. 

I should like to compare his impression of Idlewild with 
that of the visitors who passed us both by, going to see 
it at noon ! 

Natural History that " the tail of the tadpole is gradually absorbed ?" Thus 
says science : — 

*' The young frog, which is called a tadpole, is, at first, furnished with a long 
fleshy tail, and a small horny beak, having no other apparent limbs than 
little fringes on the sides of the neck. These disappear in a few days, and tho 
hind feet are very gi-adually and visibly developed ; the fore feet ai^e also deve- 
loped, but under the skin, through wliich they subsequently penetrate. Thb tail 
IS GRADUALLY ABSORBED. The beak falls, and discloses the true jaws, which, at 
first, were soft and concealed beneath the skin. The eyes ickich, at Jirst, 
cmild only he discerned through atranspay^ent spot in the skin, are n<no 
tyisihle with their three lids. There are but four toes to the anterior feet ; 
the hind ones frequently exhibit the rudiment of a siicth. Tadpoles reproduce 
their limbs when cut off." 

To the maimed, the deformed, the crippled, the amputated, the unlovely — this 
is surely an analogy with comfort in it. That which is unheavenly about us, ia 
to be "gradually absorbed." 



A POWERFUL INTEREST. 95 



LETTER XIV. 

Canterbury Rowdies— Pianos and Porkers— Unwelcome Visitors— Penalty of 
Founding — A Public Benefactor. 

Jam 25, 1S53. 

The corner of the Iliglilaud Terrace, ^Yllicll forms our 
noighborhood (a cluster of three rural villages, cut off by 
Moodna Creek and its toll-bridge from the city-reach 
influences of Newburgh), is charmingly primitive and 
rural. With no pine-apples for sale, no frcquentation by 
the gentlemen and ladies, who make twenty-four-hour 
excursions from ^ew York, no billiard- table and no news- 
paper, it is an eddy of still life, left behind in unrippled 
simplicity by the current of progress. Delightfully unaf- 
fected and farmer-like as life hereabouts is, however, we 
have a class of rowdies — rowdies with a twist to their tails 
— and they overrule the law as effectually as the rowdies 
of New York, and by the same sort of tacit admission in 
the mind of the public. The pig-interest is too strong to he 
meddled with. 

But the way in which the "higher law" is openly 
clauned for these rural rowdies, in the very heart of our 



96 LETTERS FROM IDLE\YILD. 

pretty village of Canterbury, for instance, is very curious. 
Out of any one of those nice white houses along the 
street, will come tlic most dainty-looking young ladies, 
fresh from tasty parlors, and mammas that take a maga- 
zine. The pretty white fence incloses a little garden, 
with flower-beds, edged with Ijox, rose-bushes, and lilacs. 
Door bells, or brass knockers, of course. Inside the gate 
all is "genteel." Outside the gate, however — in the 
street, on the sidewalk — right before the front door, and 
under the parlor windows, stands the family pig-trough. 
The family pigs have the run of the village during the 
day, and at night and morning they come home for their 
own particular swill — eaten, in the evening, perhaps, 
while the piano is playing on the other side of the pretty 
white fence. In dry weather, when there is no bed of 
mud in the carriage-track, in the centre of the street, the 
gentleman pig stretches himself across the sidewalk to 
sleep; and, on your way to the post-office, you may walk 
round a score or more, or take the middle of the street. 
You respect pig. You see pig. You smell pig. But beau- 
tiful young ladies sit in the windows, just over the fence. 
The cottagers in the country around would be less par- 
ticular, of course, if there were a way to be so, than the 
more genteel villagers, but the pig-trough, outside the 
gate, is the unvarying feature. And these gentlemen 
outlaws know the country, and take long walks. Leave 



THE ''legal " REMEDY. 97 

a bar down, or let your visitors from curiosity (as 
happens to me every day) forget to shut your gate as 
they cuter, aud the pigs are all over. They rooted up, 
for me, yesterday, a green slope, covered witli laurels, 
upou the beauty of which I had particularly set ray heart, 
cherishing it for a foreground to a picture some artist will 
paint for me — and it took mc and ray man an hour to get 
the unpunishable defacers out once more on the highway. 
They get in at night. Here and there one climbs a wall 
like a clumsy boy, dragging it after him as he goes over. 
The religious bearing of this " hard trial " is perhaps the 
only one that can be safely dwelt upon. One docs not 
say his prayers near so easily, I find, after driving out 
pigs morning and evening, nor begin very immediately 
again, to "love his neighbor as himself," 

It is against the law, everybody knows, for pigs to be 
turned loose on a public highway. Any one of my daily 
trespassers could be laicfidly driven by me five miles to 
the nearest "pound" — I could then lawfidlij take pains 
that the sheriff gave notice to the owner that his pig was 
thcvo-^lawfidly see that the poor animal was kept from 
starving for tlic several days before he might be taken 
away — lawfully go four or five miles to attend the jus- 
tice's court and appear as prosecutor — lawfully i)ay my 
own expenses for this two or three weeks of trouble, 
travel, and vexation — and lawfully moke an enemy for life 

5 



98 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

of the owner of the trespassing swine, who wonld, 
perhaps, have a dollar of fine to pay, in consequence of 
my persecution of him. All this it costs to follow up om 
trespass by one pig. Pig endurance costs less. 

But the village of Newburgh, only four miles from us, 
has outlived this stage of progress. Pig-vagrancy has 
been put down in its beautiful streets — owing, however, 
to the resolute public spirit of a single individual. 
Downing, to whom the country owes so much for its 
advances of refinement and embellishment, undertook to 
suppress pig at Newburgh, where he resided. He was 
told it was Quixotic — that the time, money, and trouble 
it w^ould cost might ruin him — that his grounds would be 
disfigured, his trees girdled, and his garden of precious 
plants torn in pieces by the infuriated people — that the 
poor had no place to keep their pigs, and there was much 
to be got by a smart pig on the public highway. His 
self-interest and pity for the pig proprietor were both 
appealed to. He persevered, how^ever, patiently and 
long — and succeeded. 

Now we want such a pig-apostle at Canterbury — some 
public-spirited, generous and kindly man, who will make 
himself remotely beloved and remembered by such a 
crusade of unpopularity against the rowdies at our gates. 
We wait for him, as New York waits for her pig-apostle. 
Let us make ready to give their advents a welcome. 



LIGHT FROM A DISTANCE. 99 



LETTER XY. 

Trouble in Gate Designing — Letter from an Unknown Correspondent, on Gates 
— Invisible Society at Idlewild — Correction of Error as to Hemlocks — Ilaud- 
somc Iriahman's Mistake in Felling Trees, &c. 

July 2, 1S53. 

My gate trouble at Idlewild seems to draw in light from 
a distance — wc candles of authors burning darkest at the 
wick. A friendly subscriber to the Home Journal^ who 
signs himself " parochially Yours," sends me a pencil- 
drawing of a gate that is both " pig-tight " and beautiful; 
one, indeed, which I should have pounced upon as a trea- 
sure of modest usefulness and elegance, had I seen it in 
time, but which, now (my gates being built), I can only 
reserve for the next brother-suitability who nestles a cot- 
tage hereabouts. The letter which accompanies it, by 
the way, has a verbal description, which may enable the 
appreciative to take possession of the model without see- 
ing the drawing; and, for this reason, and because the 
writer touches instructively and charmingly on one or two 
other points, I will copy the most of what he says : 

* * Your gate difficulties, as recorded ia a late number of the 



100 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

Home Journal, will meet with sympathy as far "West as civiliza- 
tion has made picket-surroundings necessary. An application to 
our village carpenter, a man of skill and taste, for the invention 
of a new gate, resulted in one, of which his inclosed pencil-sketch 
will give you some idea. The construction is simple and inexpen- 
sive ; while the cappings of the gate posts are particularly new 
and becoming. The form of the main part of the cap, as you will 
see, is that of a truncated pyramid, with a projection of about four 
inches, and supported by two brackets on each side of the post. 
The top rail of the gate is supported (or rather finished) by light 
open brackets between the pickets ; and the top rail of the fence 
by tight brackets between the pickets. Both gate and posts look 
well when built. At the left of the sketch is another sort of fence 
and post which I am now having built. The post is octagon in 
shape, with the cap to match, and the moulding "broke around 
it," as the carpenters express it. The gate used with the octagon 
post is similar to the /Dther, but both gate and post are adapted to 

a lighter fence. 

You say you sought to make your gate an index to what was 
behind it. Allow one familiar with your writings to suggest- 
either of these gates, particularly the first, as proper to carry out 
your design. I could go on and reason comparatively and logic- 
ally in extenuation, convincing you that a man is no more a 
correct judge of his own mental character than he is of his own 
portrait ; but I forbear, for which I expect your thanks. If the 
gate and its belongings do not suit you, however, throw it aside, 
and give me credit for desiring to please you. 

I once passed through a door-yard gate which did, though unin- 
tentially, give an indication of the designer's character. The gate 
was a common one, shut by a chain and ball. But the post to 



A WOODEN -HEADED PORTER. 101 

which the inner end of the chain was attached, was carved and 
painted in the likeness of a negro, with one hand raised to his 
cocked hat, and the other extended to welcome you in. As you 
opened the gate towards you, in going in, the negro post-porter 
bent towards you by a joint in his back, and fairly bowed you in. 
Upon letting the gate go, a spring in his back " brought him up 
standing " again, ready for the next comer. This faithful fellow 
performed the amiable for his master for many years, without 
reward, except now and then a new coat — of paint ; and finally 
died of a rheumatic back, contracted in his master's service. 

I can corroborate the phenomenon of the sprouting of your 
chestnut fence-posts. I lately saw a row of willow cross-stakes 
used to support the top-rail of a "Virginia," or ''Snake-fence," 
which had leaved out profusely while performing their new 
duties ; and they presented a very singular appearance, 
too. 

I thank you for your good word in favor of my old friends, the 
" hemlocks.'' In this hemlock town, they are of little account. 
My carpenter, who hates hemlock as a cat hates water, calls it 
"devil's pine." He says his trade have a tradition that the devil 
undertook to make a pine tree ; but found it so shaky that it had 
to be pinned together with long, hard knots ; which knots, in lum- 
ber, are a carpenter's abomination. * * * 

Of the invisible but gay society at Idle wild — (very 
tangible, very enjoyable and very sufficient, for me, 
though many would think it differed little from a hermit's 
loneliness), — this letter is one note of the music, over- 
heard. The consciousness of readers so thoughtful of us — 



102 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

friends at a distance wlio partake of one's daily existence, 
and respond, silently or verbally, to its key-records, as 
given in these Idlewild Papers — peoples the wood-path, 
that looks to the stranger lonely. There is no solitude in 
thoughts that are waited for. Oh, how many there are — 
kind and indulgent as friends need be — who walk with 
me by the brook I 

But there is now and then one who catches me trip- 
ping, and reads me a little lecture ; and I have one, refer- 
ring to the " hemlocks " spoken of just now, which I will 
quote for the setting right of one of my chance mis-quota- 
tions. If the reader remembers, I supported my expe- 
rience of the anodyne effect of hemlock woods, by giving 
an account of the tree, from an encyclopedia. I turned 
to it in haste, when wearily closing a finished letter, and, 
it appears, copied a description of the wrong tree. Thus 
talks my viewless companion to me, on the subject : — 

* * From long revolving in your sphere tlirough the medium 
of your writings I have come to feel a sort of personal familiarity 
with you and yours. Having, therefore, noticed a mistake in your 
last letter from Idlewild, I take the liberty of pointing it out. In 
a note to the mention of '' hemlocks," you evidently confound the 
beautiful coniferm which overshadow your cottage, with the 
" unhelliferous " water-hemlock, wherewith our friend Socrates 
dismissed this world from his presence. A potation known to me 
in some part of my experience as " swipes," is manufactui-ed, I 
believe, from the leaves of our hemlock tree ; and, if the Athenian 



HINTS ON HORTICULTURE. 103 

sage had solemnly drank but a decoction of this hemlock, his 
digestive organs would have suffered no farther disturbance, 
probably, than that which is necessarily consequent upon imbibing 
a glass of inferior '• spruce beer." 

Yours in all friendliness. 

Anotlier nameless friend sends me a valuable explana- 
tion of my failure in the transplanting of two or three of 
these same " hemlocks." He writes tlius, from Boston : — 

* * I notice by your last letter that the hemlocks, of you own 
setting out, are dying. They were probably transplanted out of 
season. JVow (June 15), is the time for transplanting evergreen 
trees, and it is the only time of year when it can be done success- 
fully. At least, from now to the fifteenth of July is the most 
favorable time, though I have done it with perfect success as late 
as the first of August. This was at Dorchester, but perhaps your 
season is a little earlier. The President of our Horticultural 
Society told me he thought July the best mouth. Remove the 
tree without injuring the roots, but, except the bucket of water 
after setting it out, do not continue to icater it for t he week or 
ten days following, unless there is a drought. * * * 

The danger of too much watering, for transplanted 
trees, is a new suggestion — one at least, which I had not 
found in the books on horticulture — and my kind friend 
may have thus given us one of those precious little un- 
previously-printed truths which are getting so scarce, 
now-a-days. Mine, which died, were watered daily — a 



104 LETTERS FRO 31 IDLEWILD, 

loyal devotion whicli I had thougbt seldom thrown away 
upon a tree. And my care and admiration of this, the 
most beautiful of my surroundings, has, in another way, 
proved equally disastrous. I must tell the story. It will 
be a kind of obituary notice of the lost trees. But^ it may 
be useful, also, as a caution to the lovers of such things. 

The working men who drift along through the country, 
are of all sorts of personal appearance. My neighbors, 
however, not selecting, as I do, with an eye to the effect 
they will have, as figures in the landscape, while they 
work — (and the humblest and most stumpy getting 
employment the easiest) — I have a kind of first choice of 
them, as to looks. If there is a man on the road who is 
unconsciously or saucily picturesque — either from his 
uppish bearing, his rough beard, or that peculiarity of 
appearance, handsome or otherwise, which raises mistrust 
against a new comer — he is pretty sure to bring up at 
Idlewild, where he is hired to dig like any other man ; 
but where he performs also an additional service of which 
he is not very laboriously aware. It is easy to locate 
him very much as a painter would do — ^if he is to choji 
up a heap of brush, for instance, to " dump " the load 
and his chopping-log at an angle of the brook or under a 
slope of the hill — and he gives life to the scene by action 
in just the right place, charmingly effective in his shirt- 
sleeves and his easy unconsciousness. One of my men, 



A RUTHLESS APOLLO. 105 

who has been with me for several months, has the brow 
and bearing- of a knight-templar, and a beard of which 
Domitias Aheuobarbus might be proud ; and, as he 
works among my trees and precipices, he is often the most 
centralizing and eflfective point of the view — the offset to 
a waterfall here or a rock there — and embellishing won- 
derfully the otherwise uninhabited landscape. He has 
little idea how many fine pictures he has helped to make, 
that are stored away in my reverie-loft — but I was about 
to speak of one whom I remember with less satisfaction. 

In the depth of an almost impenetrable wilderness, four 
or five noble young hemlocks guarded a spring ; and I 
was thinking of clearing away the underbrush from these, 
and so making an easier approach to my hidden Egeria, 
when a man applied to me for work. He had a bad face, 
but he was otherwise magnificent. So straight a back, 
so slight in hips and waist, a neck and head with so 
graceful an uplift, chest so expanded and limbs so moulded 
for lithe elegance and power — he was a Paddy-Apollo. 
He looked as if his body knew it, and stood and moved 
accordingly — though his l^rain was too dull to compre- 
hend it. 

I engaged him at once — gave him an axe — and directed 
him to the spring, where he should go and wait for me, 
after his dinner. Some one called and detained me au 
hour or two, but I finally mounted my mare, and rode to 

5* 



106 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

the glen, thinking what a fine combination it would be — 
such a figure as that, at work under those magnificent 
hemlocks. I reached the spot. There stood ray man. 
And there lay my trees ! He had cut them down — all four. 
What my exclamation was, I could scarcely venture to 
try ink upon. But I remember that I found very little 
Christian resignation in his excuse : — " You didnH come, 
Sir,'^ said he, " and I thought Td better go at something" 
Four beloved hemlocks, shading a spring, lost by appre- 
ciating the beauty of a man 1 



LAUREL BLOSSOMS. lOt 



LETTER XVI. 

Laurel-blossoming — The Imbedded Stone, and Jem's Neglect of his Country- 
man's honors — Subbath stop to our Running Water, Ac, &c. 

July 9, 1853. 

Nature, it seems to me, has her "calico and haber- 
dashery." The hanging out of the " Spring goods " along 
the Bowery was never more gaudy than the laurels now 
in flower hereabouts. The blossoms are too much, for 
they smother the leaves — the sea-green, massive and 
glossy leaves, which are as beautiful as the flowers. 
Everybody exclaims (it is true), at this gaudy glory of 
the laurels — a bushel of blossoms on every stem, and the 
colors in confused heaps, like " the worsted" for a rain- 
bow — but I observe that the slighter and rarer beauties 
of shade and water are, meantime, lost on them. Once 
familiar with the tangle of a little wilderness like this, it 
is as curious and interesting to see what strangers will 
pick out to admire, as for a painter, who left a pulse in 
every stroke of the pencil, to listen to critics as they pass. 
Open to air and sunshine as it all is, there are secrets of 
beauty at Idlewild. And these are easily missed ; 



108 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

though, like the blood-drop of his own life, which the 
poet hides in a fiction, it seems strange, that this is not 
alone read and the rest forgotten. One walks on, beside 
stranger or friend, and leaves an overlooked loveliness 
unspoken of— for it spoils a charm to be obliged to jwint 
it out and explain it — but one cannot help fretting, now 
and then, over favorites unseen and neglected. And it is 
not much consolation (strange to say) that one owns 
more of a minute by seeing more, and enjoying more, in it 
— owns more of any sweet spot by appreciating it better 
— owns more of life, more of beauty in people, more of 
sunrises and sunsets, more of books and of music, by hav- 
ing an eye truer and deeper, a sense keener and fonder. 
There is a gold — life's purest and most precious ore, too — 
which we are impatient (this would prove) not to share 

with all comers. 

****** 

And, apropos of laurels and appreciation, I had a smile, 
a day or two ago, which I believe I will not keep to 
myself, though I must record a disparagement of a friend, 
by telling the story of it. 

There is a tree in the avenue to our cottage on the 
inland side, which has taken up a flat piece of rock, as a 
cobbler takes a lapstone between his knees. The bark of 
the trunk having grown around it, the stone (of the size 
of the bottom of a chair) has been gradually lifted, till it 



THE judge's bench. 109 

is now about two feet from the ground, solidly imbedded, 
and as level and comfortable a seat as a carpenter could 
contrive. Strolling along the grounds with us, not long 
ago, out friend. Judge Daly, seated himself here ; and it 
has ever since been called " the Judge's Bench." 

But the Judge is an Irishman, and so is my magnificent 
Jem, with the Crusader's beard — a beard with two things 
behind it which I very much prize, viz : — a strong back 
and a constant and hearty performance of what he under- 
takes. We were at work upon the road, soon after the 
Judge's visit; and a superb and luxuriant laurel standing 
in the line of one of the curves, I saw that its removal 
was inevitable, but told Jem to take advantage of the 
opportunity to pay an appropriate compliment. We had 
made his countryman a Judge in America, and the least 
he could do, as a brother Emerald, was to grace the bare 
bench with this luxuriant laurel. We selected the spot, 
while I pronounced the Judge's official eulogy, and Jem 
(I thought) listened cordially, and promised to transplant 
the shrub with great care, so that it would flower in a 
week or two at his worship's elbow. 

Jem forgot all about it ! And it was the first order, iu 
eiorht months, that he had not executed to the letter. 
I was away from home the morning following, but, passing 
where the road had been graded, the second day after, I 
saw the uprooted laurel thrown into the hemlock thicket, 



110 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

on one side. I called to my man. "Faith !" said Jem, 
rubbing liis head with the most honest embarrassment, *' I 
wholly ^wremembered it, sir !" He immediately and eager- 
ly set to work, and dug a hole and planted the neglected 
laurel, however ; and, though a shrub which oftenest dies 
with transplanting, it flowered superbly ; almost cushion- 
ing the Judge's Seat with its exuberant spread. But it 
was natural, in Jem, after all, to have paid little attention 
when his countryman was praised. An American in Ire- 
land would have done the same. We are ready to glorify 
the foreigner for the very qualities to which we are dull, 
in our countrymen. Jem's was an every-day verification 
of the old proverb, but being his first inattention in almost 
a year of service, I thought the smile it stirred was 
worth sharing, perhaps. 

^ ^ ^ :!< 4^ 4: 

Nothing could well be wilder or more lawlessly pictur- 
esque than the Brook of Idlewild — the two hundred feet 
of sudden descent which it performs for our fenced-in and 
private admiration, being a wholly untame-able ravine of 
rock and rapid — but it is subject to the restraints of piety 
and industry to a degree of which the admiring stranger 
is not always aware. Our city friends oftenest passing 
Sunday with us, and the wooded solitudes of the glen 
being an inviting temple for rambling converse and medi- 
tation, it would be pleasant if the waters, on that day, 



USE SUPERSEDES ORNAMENT. Ill 

were even less restrained than on a week day — grander 
in their beauty and louder in their anthem of accompani- 
ment. But, on that day, the channel is dry ! The friends 
who walk where should be the torrent we talk of, find but 
rocks, shadows, and silence. Spite of our wishes to tlie 
contrary, the brook makes the Sabbath a day of rest. 

Yes — for the five mills, above us on the stream, shut 
their sluice-gates on Saturday night, to start with full 
ponds on Monday ! In the summer, when the springs 
are comparatively low, it takes the twenty-four hours to 
fill all these industrial reservoirs ; and, on the first work- 
ing-day of the week — when our friends have just left us — 
the loosened waters come down and the cascades are in 
their glory. The washerwomen, perhaps, think it a spe- 
cial Providence, contrived though it be by mortal millers ; 
but we wish that " washing-day " would bring our visitors 
also to the brook. Charming on Monday, we are, on the 
other five days, subject for our beauty to the caprices of 
the clouds — modified to a certain degree, it is true, by 
the miller next above us, who may shut his gate morning 
or evening, and stop off our loveliness till his dam runs 
over. Those who come to Idlewild, day after day, may 
forget or remember, as they prefer the romantic explained 
or not, that the wild torrent by which they stray depends 
somewhat on whether our neighbor has corn to grind. 



112 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER XYIL 

EITect of clearing out Underbnish from a Wood — Praise Disclaimed — Horror 
of Bloomeri-ized Evergreens— Neglect of departed Great Men — Carrion Nui- 
sance, Ac, &C. 

July 16, 1853. 

To place the columns of a temple and let angels build 
the roof, might be thought to realize the Millenium which 
we all hope to come back and sec — but it is very much 
the experience of one who clears a wood of underbrush in 
the winter, and then sees it leafed over in June. I daily- 
walk through an avenue which we cleared in December 
last, and feel as if I had been helped by a miracle. It is 
an aisle under a dome of emerald. An atmosphere so dim 
with contemplative shadows, yet so living with the flecks 
of light, made tremulous with the stirring leaves, seems to 
me an outdoing of Gothic windows and painted glass. So 
to contrive beauty and exercise power — to begin a work 
which is so followed up and completed by Kature — is as 
good as to be a king and build a cathedral. 

But I (the stray cows and I) must enter a disclaimer at 
some praise that has been bestowed upon the trees of 



AN EXTIIUSIASTIC EDITOR. 113 

Idlewild. A stranger, who has been here, writes kindly 
and enthusiastically to the editor of the Ncwhirgh 
Gazette, and sums us up in a sentence : ''The view not to 
be surpassed, the trees beautifidly trimmed and plenty of 
them; rapids, falls and ponds." And to this the editor 
himself adds a confirmatory and charmingly written half 
column, but repeating the partial error which I, and the 
cattle of Neighbor Loosepig, cannot justly leave unmodi- 
fied by an explanation. Thus writes Mr. Allison (who I 
hope will honor his brother-craftsman with his acquiantance 
wheu he next drives over) : — 

" Our correspondent does not over-estimate the beauties of ' Idle- 
wild,' it is, truly, a delightful spot, as a recent excursion to its cool 
shades and gurgling waterfalls convinced us. It is in all respects 
a delectable abode — delightfully located on the west bank of the 
Hudson, about five miles below Newburgh. The road leading to 
it is charmingly picturesque, and we know not a drive that can 
more agreeably occupy an afternoon. "We were fairly lost in the 
wildness of its solitudes. Were we an afflicted Rip Yan "Winkle, 
we know of no other spot where we would sooner sleep away our 
troubles. Nature holds out an alluring pastime to the wanderer 
along its solitary walks — its serpentine streams — its wild water- 
falls ; your ears are continually saluted by the music of miniature 
torrents and cascades, where the wild waters are precipitated over 
ledge and precipice, as they rush boundingly on to the Hudson. 
A beautiful variety of trees , judiciously improved by the hand of 
Art, increase the picturesqueness of the scene. Mr. "Willis bas here 
a country seat in all respects calculated to surround a literary life 



114 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I L D . 

with the very inspirations which it needs. After seeing it and 
roaming for several hours amid its exquisite scenes, listening to its 
murmuring waterfalls, and fanning ourselves in the breezes that 
loiter in its sylvan recesses, we no longer wondered, etc., etc., * * 
The feelings which the spot spontaneously inspired, were aptly 
expressed by a lady of our party, who wrote irpon the artificial 
railing, which assisted us across the stream just below the princi- 
pal waterfall — ' Second edition of Paradise Regained — Illus- 
trated.^ It is truly a miniature Eden — as near an earthly Paradise 
as Nature and Art can make it." 

This is charming praise, but for its intimation as to my 
" improving trees by the hand of Art." If, by '' trees 
beautifully trimmed " is meant trees of which the cow- 
twistincrs have been cut off, I consent to the fact thus 
gracefully mystified. I^eighbor Loosepig's cattle have 
heads full of fleas; and when they break in, after sun- 
down, and pass the night between grazing and twisting 
their horns into the lower branches of the cedars and 
hemlocks, they spoil, of course, such foliage as they can 
reach. Perhaps our visitor had the removal of these 
un-mend-able small-tooth combs of breachy cattle in his 
eye when he wrote. But, if he supposed there was a 
single tree which had been despoiled of its lower branches 
for beauty only, he does my love of Nature an injustice. 
Oh no ! — trees des}X)iled of their lower drapery there may 
be — but those Bloomerized evergreens had torn petticoats 



POSTHUMOUS FORGETFULNESS. 115 

to begin with. The legs to be secu are of those whose 
covering was not worth preserving. I have Downing's 
horror of tree-trimming — let me here record it. 

Of cows I have one more local mention to make — one 
that will, perhaps, be delicate to handle — but I must 
venture upon it, and try in some other way to patch up 
my popularity with my neighbors. 

We are neglectful of our dead, as a nation. Mount 
Yernon, upon which England would have piled a hundred 
Westminster Abbeys, if there were room, is just sold to 
the highest bidder. The columns to our statesmen and 
our hero-Presidents rise with galvanized spasms. Near 
by to Idlewild (a Spirit of Glory and a Spirit of Beauty, 
whose once belonging here gives pride and grace to the 
air about us) are the unmonumented graves of Duncan 
and Downing. We seem to resent greatness, and pass it 
eagerly behind us into oblivion. 

But (if I may be pardoned for having stumbled over a 
sadness when in search of a smile) I was about to speak 
of the other extreme of this posthumous forgetfulness. 
On the romantic banks of the Hudson we do not even 
bury our cows ! Since last August, almost a twelve- 
month, the carcass of one has lain at water's edge, within 
stone's throw of the lively village of Cornwall; and within 
a mile of Newburgh lies another (and has lain for the 



116 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

three months siuce warmer weather forced its claims on the 
nose of posterity, and how much longer I know not) — 
and, of the lesser dead, cur and grimalkin, there are daily 
comings and goings, their insignificant weight giving them 
a blessed buoyancy upon the tide through which they are 
no sooner detested than forgotten. 

Xow — after the subject's being suggested daily by the 
shie-ing of my mare, or the call for camphor by those who 
are driving with me — there have occurred to my mind 
three remedies for the evil, one of which must come into 
effect, it seems to me, with the first step of our glorious 
country beyond the mere prosiierities of civilization. 
Either each family should be taxed with the honors to its 
own dead, from the chance carrion that drifts upon its 
land, to the chance greatness that was rocked in its cra- 
dle ; or they, neighbors or others, whose comforts or 
interests, safety or sense of beauty, are, or have been, 
affected by the unhonored one, should contribute as they 
pass ; or, the Public should recognize duty to the dead 
among its governmental functions, and appomt its officers 
accordingly. The latter, after much reflection (assisted 
by camphor and compulsory attention and remark), seems 
to me the remedy most efficient and desirable. In its full 
extent — -justice to all the dead — it would be sanguine 
indeed to believe its going ante-Millenially into operation. 
But there is hope in beginnings. The new office would. 



DE MORTUIS. lit 

with even limited funds and functions, be welcomed in 
every village upon lake or river, and find candidates 
enougli. And when the new functionary — (Esq. and 
Coroner of Dead Cow) — shall have done justice for 
a while to the chance un-salt-ed on brook and river, may 
we take a step onward towards a shadow that is now 
dwarfed in the distance before us — the country's duty to 
its unhonored for deeds and intellects ! 



118 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER XVIII. 

Summer of Even Weather — Lightning-Rod3 falling into Disuse — Filling of 
Country Boarding-houses — Luxury of Rural Remoteness — ^^'^iewless Peopling 
of a Spot — 'Wallace the Composer, and his Tribute to Alexander Smith, &c.,&c. 

Jvly 23, 1853. 

The summer, Litlierto, lias been one of singularly even 
distribution — rain and sunshine, coolness and heat, 
breezes and thunder-storms, alternating, with the punc- 
tual iteration of meal-times. Of thunder and lightning 
we have had more than used to be a monthly allowance ; 
but as these imposing phenomena of weather come around 
with more common-place and familiar regularity, while, 
at the same time, the lightning " strikes " more seldom 
than formerly, we are in want of a theory to account for 
it. Has the republican principle impregnated the ex- 
halations, so that any superiority of one storm over 
another is yielding to a democratic equality, in cloud- 
land ? Or, does the increasing net-work of railroad iron 
and telegraph wires divide and scatter the otherwise un- 
tapped accumulations of electricity ? Of the two causes, 
it would seem to be rather owing to the spread of the 
popular principle, judging by simultaneous phenomena — 



SUMMER CHANGES. 119 

the Thcodore-Parker-slauglit upon tlie glory-cloud of 
Webster's memory, f(jr example, and the lament of the 
Tribune over the galleries of vefluable pictures " buried 
iu the private houses and parlors of the English aristo- 
cracy," being somewhat corroborative. Whichever the 
cause, moral or physical, thunder-clouds, like English 
noblemen, are becoming mainly industrial in their action 
on the atmosphere around us — the conservative exclu- 
siveness of lords and weather alike losing force — and, 
even in my small way, I can acknowledge having profited 
by the change. There is a proudly democratic trifle in 
my pocket, the price of a lightning-rod, that would have 
been necessary to my new cottage, but for thunder-and- 
lightning's having become of no consequence. 

With the advance of the summer, the usual change has 
come about, in the character of our population. The 
farm-houses are peopled with city-boarders — butter 
scarce : horses in great demand ; a tree an exception, 
which has not a nurse and baby under it ; and the roads, 
at evening, quite hollyhocked with young ladies in gay 
ribbons. Near as we are to two of the most fashionable 
summer resorts of the country, we charmingly preserve 
our rural habits, as a neighborhood. At a mere biscuit- 
toss over the ridge of the Highlands sits West Point ; 
but the row-boat communication around the bluff, is so 



120 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

tedious as to bo an effectual barrier. Newburgh, with 
its gay aud crowded '' Powelton House," is but four 
miles off, but the two toll-gates, between, seem to fence 
off their gay equipages from our lovely lanes. Were it 
not for the proposed railroad on the Hoboken side of the 
Hudson (which will at once thorouglifare us into the 
featureless comc-at-a-blcness of the rest of this valley of 
hurry), we should remain a rare shelf of country-life still 
untainted — domestic and economical rurahzing still to be 
found, here, for quiet families and lovers of unceremonious 
seclusion. We may last simple, for yet a while, it is true 
—but I cannot help croaking over the inevitable fore- 
shadowings of "improvement in the vicinity," however 
much my neighbors may rejoice at the prophetic dollars 
it adds to the prices of their lands. With no deliberate 
leisure — no contemplative repose to strengthen the inward 
structure of character, and mortar into proportion the 
broken edges of events — ^life becomes a mere scaffolding 
of destinies unbuilt, loosely incomplete, and unworthily 
slight and temporary. I dread more industry hereabouts . 
I would patriotically oppose any more stir, any more 
hurry, any more of what would call for larger shop-signs, 
fresh paint and "business enterprise." But let us enjoy 
the benighted repose of our little corner, yet a while. 
* * * * * * * 

Idlewild is getting fast peopled with the viewless crowd 



WALLACE, THE COMPOSER. 121 

that will make liauiitcd ground of it. Knowing what we 
do of Nature, it would be illiberal to suppose that a 
shaded walk is the same, whether fair forms have trod it 
or no — that the brook-music of a wild glen is the same, 
whether or no bright intellects poured thoughts upon its 
inarticulate echoes. Uhland's ferry-passenger, who paid 
triple price because he had thought of his wife and child 
in crossing — 

('• Take, oh boatman, thrice thy fee. 
Spirits twain have crossed with me ") — 

was a conscientious acknowledger of peopled air. Of the 
many who come to Idlewild, some stay on, unseen. It is 
half why now and then another, who comes after, finds 
the air strangely enchanting. 

But I will add ink to a quaint compliment thrown on 
the air of Idlewild, a day or two ago, for the new poet, 
Alexander Smith. The one who said it is an entrapper 
of those lightning-fancies which it takes genius to arrest 
in their flash, and his music is full of them — the " Clock 
Waltz," for example, where the dance stops while the 
clock strikes twelve. It was Wallace, the composer, 
the violinist, the pianist — a king in this realm of ear- 
witchery, but quite as subtle in his originalities of thought 
and language — and we were dangling our legs over the 
brook, together, sitting on the bridge and wiling away 

6 



122 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

the summer noon with gossip and idleness. I should pre- 
mise, by the way, that Wallace is the most unconscious 
sayer of good things whom I have ever fallen in with — 
not knowing, apparently, his own utterance of the strang- 
est thought from the expenditure of the same amount of 
breath in a respiration. He was speaking of some one 
whose name he could not remember. After looking for a 
perplexed moment into the foam dashing below — " Call 

him John Smi " ( Smith, he was about to say, but, 

arresting the word between his lips, when half pro- 
nounced, he straightened himself, lifted his hat, and looked 
around as if to acknowledge a sudden presence) — " Smith 
is a name, now," he continued, " a poet, by Jove ! — 
Alexander Smith ! — But, as I was saying, this man — 
call him Jones " — and he went on with his story, though 
not till after a musing half-instant, in which he evidently 
was recalling to his voluptuous memory a delicious book 
in which he had (un-professionally) found a revel for his 
fancy. I do not think he ever knew whether I heard his 
queer parenthesis, or not. But " Smith " would have 
been pleased to hear it — and will find it in the air, if he 
ever come to Idlewild. 



NEGLECT OF DRESS. 123 



LETTER XIX. 

Neglect of Personal Appearance in Country Seclusion — Unexploring Habits of 
City People — Dignity of Un-daiuage-able Dress — Thoughts on Cooper's Man- 
sion being turned into a Boarding-house — Suggestion to Authors, as to 
turning their Influence to better Account — Letter from Cooperstown, &c., &c. 

July 80, 1S53. 

The dashing snrf of city population which ebbs to our 
ocean of green leaves in June, reminds us of the bubbles 
on sidewalk shore — the dress and fashion, at high tide, 
which we had well-nigh forgotten. It is one of the little 
restraints (or little wholesome reminders — which you 
please), of living " within city reach." I caught myself 
growing shabby, by the aid of its inevitable com- 
parison; and I had really been quite insensible of the 
change as it had come about. One begins to be neglect- 
ful of dress as soon as " folks'-eyes " are taken off by the 
Autumn departures. And, from that time to Summer 
again, the comfort of dress that may be forgotten with 
one's breakfast, becomes a habit difficult to unlearn. It 
is hard to take boots and hats once more in, among things 
to be thought of. The overcoat that has been worn six 
months for a body-coat, seems the tightest thing that is 



124 LETTERS FRO LI IDLE WILD. 

any way rational — but it would look Diogenes-tub-y to 
persist in wearing what would make strangers stare. 
Boots of wliicli the owner is but twice conscious — their 
first day's wear and their last — seem to use up quite 
enough of an immortal soul's amount of the attention to 
be given to things on this planet; but such boots as have 
two soles to be saved, besides the soul of the wearer (con- 
siderably more than a trebling of one's grudging attention 
to what is to be saved) — must be worn where ladies come 
and go. A cravat that can be tied while watching a sun- 
rise, must be displaced by one that takes as much time 
and thought as the reading of, at least, two chapters of 
the Bible, " with hymn and doxology " — but the loose tie 
(to the eyes of the world that never asks how the time 
gained by the neglect may have been differently applied) 
looks " hardly respectable." Not that I would say a 
word against such " personal appearance " as is graceful 
and becoming. Wives take more pride in us' — children 
respect us more — common people think better of us, and 
dogs are less likely to bark at us — for a " genteel exte- 
rior." But all things have something in the oj^posite 
scale. And, for instance, with a horse saddled at the 
door, and a glorious morning going on in the fields and 
woods around, I declare I find it very difficult to lose the 
half hour or more which the difference of dress requires. 
One gets sensitive about losing mornings, after getting 



LOW VALUATION OF SCEXERY. 125 

a little used to them with living in tlie country. Each one 
of these endlessly varied daybreaks is an opera but once 
performed — a light upon a stray cloud at sunrise, perhaps, 
being like a wondrous passage of music that may never be 
repeated — and is this to be lost for the tie of a cravat ? 

I daily see parties of young gentlemen and ladies who 
are summering in the country about us. They would 
enjoy it, of course, to the best of their knowledge and con- 
venience. But the slopes — the rocks in the fields, the 
eminences within a half-hour's scramble — are the points 
from which the delicious scenery around them is best 
seen; and yet they walk only upon the common road. 
Our own ravine of Idlewild — a gem of scenery, in its far- 
down depths, which people might well take journeys to 
see — was scarce known to exist, by summer boardei*s 
within half-a-mile of it, till we made it promenade-able 
with smooth paths. It is a very simple problem, the glo- 
rious enjoyment of all Nature has to show, in one scale, 
and a pair of patent leather shoes in the other. As these 
gentlemen unconsciously price it, scenery is proved to be 
dear at the cost of a shoe-scratch. It is the dread of 
damage to sidewalk-y boots and shoes (which English cus- 
toms declare to be wholly out of taste as well as out of 
place in the country), that keeps daintily-shod city gen- 
tlemen from exploring the points of view in these magni 
ficent Highlands of the Hudson. And they are willing to 



126 .LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

lose grace and freedom of movement into the bargain. It 
is a thick shoe alone that treads fairly and firmly on a 
country road. The gait that spares patent leather is con- 
strained and unmanly. I saw an over-dressed youth jump 
from a wall, a day or two since. He had been sent into 
the adjoining field, by the lady he was with, to gather a 
flower or a blackberry. But, as he came to the ground, 
there was an anxious three-dollar-fifty-tude in the way of 
dividing a shock among his joints — an effort to spare his 
boots — which must have given a ludicrous turn to the 
impression he was making on the mind of the lady. 
Would it not be good policy as well as good philosophy — 
would it not " pay," even for city folks — to dress plainly 
and un-daviage-ally when out of town ? I wish it could 
be brought about. To think for oneself, if one pleases, 
but to look like other people whether or no, is the law of 
a republic; and I unwillingly conform to our great All- 

alike-dom's superfinery in the country. 

****** 

I have been half sad, half merry, to-day, musing over a 
letter I received. I will add it below, that it may be 
read merely for its information, if the reader prefer. It is 
dated at " Cooper House, Cooperstown " — the homestead 
of our Pioneer Imagination, our Early-day Fame and 
Glory — converted, at his death, into a summer hoarding- 
hou^e, as the public knows. There are two feelings 



A BAPTISMAL FEE. 127 

stirred by this — or rather a feeling and a consideration. 
The spirit of the family -proud gentleman — for that he was, 
and a patriotic republican, too — would look mournfully 
back from the shadows of Memory-land, at this putting 
of waiters* aprons upon his household gods, and setting 
them to answer bells and take sixpences. Ilis home and 
its ancestral atmosphere of dignity were his passion — 
indulged, perhaps we may say without disrespect, with 
imprudeut costliness, since their barriers were to be 
broken through at his death. I was impressed with the 
prominence of this feature of his mind, in walking with 
him through his grounds and over his house, a few sum- 
mers ago. He was cherishing and embellishing the estate 
— the manorial centre of Ccoperstown — as if it were never 
to pass from his family. 

But, this is a country where the horse Pegasus is not 
admired unless drawing a cart, and where the Muses are 
most respected at the wash-tub. We will not weep over 
it (unless wc can set up a soda-fountain with our spare 
tears) — let us take a business view of the matter. 

Should not the authors themselves turn a penny out of 
this national disposal of literary fames ? Should not Irv- 
ing and Prescott '' charge " for having hotels named after 
them ? Would not Sunny-side " pay " to be got gradu- 
ally ready for a boarding-house, and the post-mortuum sale 
anticipated by Geoffrey Crayon himself — transferable with 



128 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

furniture and associates, thirty days from liis death, 
Longfellow, is a long-lived customer, but bis mansion at 
Cambridge would make such a " splendid place to drive 
out to and eat strawberries," that it might "do" to cut 
down those " Washington elms," and be laying out the 
beds. Morris, at TJndercliff, 1 trust, has *' too long to 
run." Hawthorne should have a cottage to return to, 
that would be more ''permanent stock " than his Consu- 
late. I will build one for beloved Theodore Fay, in a dell 
of Idlewild, with the first symptom of his bringing home 
the honors of his Foreign Embassy to grace its value. 
The younger poets and rising authors are a California 
mine undug — if they did but know it. Would not a com- 
pany in Wall street " make a good thing " by hiring 
Curtis and the rest to go and live on "places" — the 
" stock " to rise or fall as the forthcoming and future 
celebrity of these men of genius should make their homes 
valuable for boarding-houses ? It is quite time that 
American genius recognized the nature of the soil their 
laurels are planted in. Fame " pays " over here. Let 
other countries raise monuments and statues to great 
men — a silly waste of stone, loe say, unless they can be 
Macadamized — though, by the way, we clipped a passage 
from the last month's English Review, which reads a lec- 
ture to Poets on this very point of not turning themselves 
to account. Thus says the writer : — 



THE COOPER iiorsE. 129 

« The contempt of practical men for the poets is based upon a 
consciousness that they are not bad enough for a bad world. To a 
practical man nothing is so absurd as the lack of worldly shrewd- 
ness. The very complaint of the literary life, that it does not 
amass wealth and live in palaces, is the scorn of the practical man; 
for he cannot understand that intellectual opacity which prevents 
the literary man from seeing the necessity of the different pecuni- 
ary condition. It is clear enough to the publisher who lays up 
fifty thousand a year, why the author ends the year in debt. But 
the author is amazed that he who deals in ideas can only dine upon 
occasional chops, while the man who merely binds and sells ideas, 
sits down to perpetual sirloin. If they should change places, for- 
tune would change with them. The publisher, turned author, 
would still lay by his hundreds. The publishing author would 
directly lose thousands. It is simply because it is a matter of pru- 
dence, economy, and knowledge of the world." 

And now for the letter from our friend, the lodger at 
Cooper House : — 

" After pursuing a most erratic course for the last two months, 
jogging about hither and thither, sometimes on pleasure, oftener 
on business, jaded, bruised and worn thin in steamboats, railcars, 
and stage-coaches 5 alternately feasted and starved at good, bad, 
and indifferent hotels, I have finally, partly through accident, an- 
chored in Cooperstown, and now date from the fourth story of the 
Cooper House, where I shall tarry long enough at least to shake 
off the dust, grow cool, take a long breath, and look around me. 
Well, a word or two, respecting my present harbor. This Coo- 
per House is, indeed, a fine affair. Purchased by an enterprising 

6* 



130 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

gentleman from New- York, it has been, this spring, most expedi- 
tiously converted into a spacious, airy, elegant hotel ; the proprie- 
tor displaying an admirable taste and tact in leaving the two 
lower stories of the building in their original state, exactly as 
when occupied by their late distinguished possessor, J. Fenimore 
Cooper. These apartments, so sacred to his memory, by retain- 
ing their identity, throw an additional charm and delight over the 
whole house, while a peculiar zest and local interest are yielded 
to the * Deerslayer,' and the ' Pioneers,' when perused in the unal- 
tered, identical library of their departed author ! The grounds 
are also untouched, and are wild and extensive — bewildering one 
in a perfect labyrinth of serpentine walks and miniature forests ; a 
tastefully constructed flower-garden, forming a pleasing supple- 
ment. Indeed, as a summer retreat, this hotel, for beauty of situ- 
ation and classic association, cannot be surpassed. At all events, 
the view now gladdening my vision from this \findow, can rarely 
be excelled by one more lovely or diversified. How I wish I 
could paint, draw, sketch, scrawl, or even scribble you a por- 
trait ! To the north stretches the lake — beautiful, and calm, and 
bright with the gorgeous hues of the setting sun — surrounded by 
a perfect amphitheatre of hills, of a bold, undulating outline, 
creating a scenic effect truly picturesque and romantic. A per- 
fect landscape — one of Nature's own masterpieces, which your 
pen could adequately portray and eulogize. Mine is feeble, and 
only in the most prosaic terms can it express my heartfelt admi- 
ration. This lake is indeed a gem — capital for fishing, admira- 
ble for sailing, perfect for pic-nics, exquisite for moon-light tete a 
tetes ! Why, in the name of all that's charming and delightful, 
are you not here this moment ? Quit your Idlewild, or any other 
wild, and only truly rusticate in and around the groves and moun- 



NATTY BUMI'O'S CAVE. 131 

tains Of ' Leather Stocking ' memory ! Your muse would here be 
nobly inspired. Imagination and Fancy, holding high carnival ia 
your brain, a volume of poems alone could satisfy and appease 
the revellers ! 

'^Refreshing my memory with the ' Deerslayer,' a few days 
since, I was seized, of course, with an irresistible desire to visit 
'Natty Bumpo's' cave ; so, making all needful inquiries as to the 
route, I sallied forth, and, in due time, reached the spot. The as- 
cent to the renowned cave is a terrible one, and only after losing 
my hat, my breath, my courage, and nearly my neck, dir I gain 
the summit, and fairly plant my foot, on classic ground ! But the 
view here obtained, I found surpassingly beautiful, and fully 
compensated for my break-neck scramble. Seated upon a rock, 
the cool breeze fanning my face, I abandoned myself to all the 
luxury of a fairyland illusion— my delighted eye ranging over an 
unbroken succession of mountain, hill, dale, and valley, well cul- 
tivated farms, and rich fields of waving grain,— the complete 
compass of the lake including the rise and graceful sweep of the 
Susquehanna. Rousing from my reverie, I clambered down from 
my dizzy height, and explored the interior of the cave, which is 
of no great magnitude 5 found it rather damp and solitary, so I 
lighted a cigar, by way of cheering myself, dedicating the curl- 
ing smoke, as a sort of grateful incense to old 'Natty's' memory! 
Finally, retracing my steps homeward, I arrived in time for din- 
ner ; myself rather fatigued, my coat slightly torn, my luvt much 
battered, and my stomach a perfect vacuum ! All of which evils 
were soon remedied ; and light indeed did I esteem them when 
compared with the pleasures which accompanied their infliction. 
But I weary your patience with my raptures. My praises of this 
mountain country, however, are justly due. My admiration 



132 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

continues unsated, and ' scenes must be beautiful which, daily- 
viewed, please daily.' 

" Hither repair, recruit your health, ' and indulge the dream 
of fancy, tranquil and secure.' 

" Yours, sincerely, 

Phil." 



JUNE DUPLICATED. 133 



LETTER XX. 

Timely Seasons and Untimely Age in America — Wild Glen so near the Hud- 
son—Finding of Water Lilies— Anchoring a Lily in a Brook— Name of 
Moodna, &c. &c. 

August 6, 1S54. 

The frequency of our thunder-claps, of late, seems to 
have acted on the seasons like an " encore " — for tliis July- 
is but June over again. The wonderful increase of bulk in 
the trees, since the time when they usually stop enlarging 
and multiplying their leaves, is a subject of general remark 
among the farmers. The foliage has come in crowds and 
processions. The streams, too — commonly losing their 
fulness at this season — arc now in the loveliest plumpti- 
tude of Spring. Ah, could this sweet re-/^^?ic-venescence 
of stream and foliage be copied by our country's flesh and 
blood — a country in which people grow old faster than in 
any other, and where, instead of repeating our June of 
youth, we Autumnify in Summer, and Wintrify in 
Autumn, omitting seasons with a diseased hurry in which 
there is no justice to fruit or seed ! And, as to the 
" Indian Summer" — green old age — it blooms in Europe 
in every homestead, though denied to their climate. We 



134 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

have it in our climate — but we have no second summer of 
parents and grandparents, blooming in vigorous and hale 
renewal, tranquil and venerably beautiful, after life's 
stormy equinox of care ! When will old age, in America, 
be the long-cherished honor and comfort to its children, the 
fruition and happiness to itself, that it is in other lands ? 

My cottage, at Idlewild, is a pretty type of the 
two lives which they live who are wise — the life in full 
view, which the world thinks all, and the life out of sight, 
of which the world knows nothing. You see its front 
porch from the thronged thoroughfares of the Hudson ; but 
the grove behind it overhangs a deep-down glen, tracked 
but by ray own tangled paths and the wild torrent which 
they by turns avoid and follow — a solitude which the 
hourly hundreds of swift travellers who pass within echo- 
distance affect not the stirring of a leaf. But it does not 
take precipices and groves to make these dose remotenesses. 
The city has many a one — many a wall on the crowded 
street behind which is the small chamber of a life lived 
utterly apart. Idlewild, with its viewless other side 
hidden from the thronged Hudson — its dark glen of 
rocks and woods, and the thunder or murmur of its 
Brook — is but this every wise man's inner hfe " illustrated 
and set to music." 

One of the most plain-spoken and practical of our lady- 
neighbors was giving me a direction, the other day, for 



A PLEASING DISCOVERY. 135 

the safe imprisoning of a flower in this hidden ravine ; 
and it was couched in so sweet a phrase, that it would 
seem as if the glen couki only be spoken of — as the 
inner life it resembles can only be written of — in poetry. 
I had come in, rich and happy, from a ride — rich in the 
discovery of a passionately-loved fragrance tributary to 
the air of Idlewild ; one, the dreamy deliciousness of 
which I remembered from boyhoood, lamenting its 
absence, here, among a wilderness of sweets more prized. 
I had found water-lilies mar by — a pond full of them, in 
the very midst of the nameless village,* just around the 
bend of the valley. They looked at home, though the 
water which embosomed them lay between two factories ; 
for no rural village of old England is more picturesque 

* Why not name it after Its mother — the "creek" that turns its mills? 
MooDNA is a good honest word ; and so peculiar, withal, that it would avoid mail 
blunders, and work well. A village with two hundred children should surely be 
providing them with a name to say where they came from. As it is the nearest 
village to Idlewild, I belong to it myself; and I claim to be spokesman for the 
children, as one who suffers, with them, from the prolonged deferring of a bap- 
tism for our whereabout. As for me, I must have some token to give of where I 
belong — some name of a place to date a letter from. I have once before pro- 
posed " Avoca " (the meeting of waters) — three streams meeting below the 
village; but we soon heard of several Avocas. Moodna, the traditionary word 
which belongs to the stream it depends upon and graces, is a better name ; and, 
till the Postmaster-General gives us another, I shall venture (with your permis- 
sion, dear neighbor villagers !) to make use of this. Idlewikl, near 3Ioodna, 
must be my date for letters — though it is a strange country where such auto- 
geogi'aphy should be necessary in a village of five hundred inhabitants. 



136 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

and lovely than this ; and, under the shade of the old 
trees, is seen, after working hours, as well-dressed and 
joyous-looking a population as could easily be found — 
rural scenery and happy industry combining to form the 
whole type of the village, it seems to me. 

It was, of course, a first thought to transplant one of 
these lovely lilies to the Brook of Idlewild — broidcring 
its banks with those slender and delicate white leaves, as 
if with the spread hands of infants scattering fragrance. 
But, to be the home of anything so delicate, the brook is 
too wild, at times. With the chasm through which its 
gentlest flow or its most swollen freshet must alike come 
— a succession of plunging cascades, with a descent of 
two hundred feet — it would be rough work for a lily in 
the pond below. And it was the expression of this dread, 
to the lady I speak of, which drew put her remark. 
" Oh," she said, " the lily is delicate, but it will stay if 
you anchor it wdl.^' I was simply to lay a fragment of 
the rude rock upon the roots of the fragile flower — but 
the expression had so sweet an inner rainbow of simili- 
tude — the delicate love that can be so transplanted and 
" anchored," to bloom safely and fragrantly in a torrent's 
path I It was one of those poems, in a word, which are 
sometimes uttered so unconsciously in ordinary conver- 
sation. 



AN AVALANCHE 



13t 



LETTER XXI. 

Avalanche or Storm-King— IdlewUd Ravaged by the Flood— Accidents to Per- 
sona and DestrucUon to Property— House Laid Open— Rareness of such Phe- 
nomena, &c., &c. 

August 13, 1S53. 

I DO not sec, in the Tribune* or other daily papers, 
any mention of an event which occupies a whole column 
of the outside page of the highest mountain above West 
Point. An avalanche of earth and stone, which has 
seamed, from summit to base, the tall bluff that abuts 
upon the Hudson— forming a column of news which is 
visible for twenty miles and seen by every traveller on 
railway or steamer— has thus reported a deluge we have 
had a report a mile long and much broader than Broad- 

* Begging pardon of the Tribune— since this was written, Thursday's paper 
has come to hand, containing the following paragraph :— 

"There was a great freshet in Orange County, on Monday afternoon. 
Extensive damage was done to buildings and farms on the margins of streams. 
Canterbury and CornwaU were the principal sufferers. In many places on the 
hillsides the roads were washed away, gullies to the depth of some twelve feet 
being made. The country in various places presents the appearance of havmg 
been torn with an earthquake. From the steamboat in the neighborhood of 
Crow's Nest, Uie banks of the river had a striking, grand effect ; the water rush- 
ing from the summit of the hills like a cataract, and dashing into the Uudson. 



138 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

way, of which (I say again) there is no corresponding 
mention in any other journal. *^ 

Seriously, however (and it is scarce kind or in good 
taste, perhaps, to commence so triflingly the mention of 
what has been a severe calamity to our neighborhood), 
we have had a deluge in the valley immediately around 
us — a deluge which is shown, by the overthrown farm- 
buildings ; the mills, dams and bridges swept away ; the 
well-built roads cut into chasms ; the destruction of horses 
and cattle, and the imminent peril to life, to have been a 
phenomenon quite beyond the warnings of previous 
experience. Covering so comparatively small a space — a 
mile or two in breadth — its results would hardly be much 
heard of, or thought credible by the country around ; 
yet, by the tenants of the cottages swept away, and by 
the many heavy sufferers, in property, along the courses 
of the streams, it is thought that few natural events have 
ever happened, more startling and calamitous. It occur- 
red three days since (on the evening of August 1st), and 
a walk, to-day, down the valley which forms the thorough- 
fare between Cornwall Landing and Canterbury — (or 
rather a climb and scramble over its gulfs in the road, its 
upset barns and sheds, its broken vehicles, drift-lumber, 
rocks and rubbish) — would impress a stranger like a walk 
after the Deluge of Koah. Idlewild has suffered severely 
in its beauty — bridges, dams and embankments swept 



DANGER AND ESCAPE. 139 

away ; green meadow-glades covered with loose rocks, 
logs and gravel ; patlis effaced, and noble old shade-trees 
barked and peeled by the drift-wood, or half-prostrated 
and uprooted — but the first sympathy, of course, is with 
the destruction to what is useful. Let us leave for a 
moment, the damages to what is merely ornamental, and 
speak of perils to life and interruptions to business. 

The flood came upon us with scarce half an hour's 
notice. My venerable neighbor of eighty years of age, 
who has passed his life here, and knows well the workings 
of the clouds among the mountains, had dined with us, 
but hastened his departure to get home before what 
"looked like a shower" — crossing, with his feeble steps, 
the stream whose strongest bridge, an hour after, was 
swept away by the torrent. Another of our elderly 
neighbors, the principal merchant of Cornwall, had a 
much narrower escape. The sudden rush of water 
alarmed him for the safety of an old building he uses for 
his stable, and which stood upon the bank of the small 
stream usually scarce noticeable as it crosses the street 
at the landing. He had removed his horse, and returned 
to unloose a favorite dog, tied in the inclosure ; but, 
before he could accomplish it, the building fell. The 
single jump with which he endeavored to clear himself of 
the toppling rafters, threw him into the torrent, and he 
was swept headlong towards the gulf which it had already 



140 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

torn in tlie wharf on the Hudson. His son and two 
others, who chanced to see him, pkmged in at this critical 
moment, and succeeded in snatching him from destruction. 
Still another of our most venerable citizens, the portly and 
honored Judge of the district, was riding up from Corn- 
wall to his residence, when the solid and strongly-em- 
banked road was swept away, before and behind him, 
and he had barely time to unhitch his horse and make 
his escape, leaving his carriage islanded between the 
chasms. A man who was driving, with his wife and 
child, along our own wall on the river-shore, had a yet 
more fearful escape — his horse suddenly forced to swim, 
and his wagon set afioat and carried so violently against 
a tree, by the swollen current of Idlewild Brook, that he 
and his precious load were thrown into the water, and 
with difficulty reached the bank beyond. In one of the 
houses, the front of which was swept away, were four 
women with two or three children. They fled from the 
toppling doorways, and took refuge under a tree which 
was, immediately after, so surrounded by the torrent, 
that they feared to leave it. A passing neighbor rescued 
them, after a trying period of suspense. There are vague 
reports of other similar escapes and risks, but these are 
all which have yet come definitely to my knowledge; and 
though horses and cattle were drowned, there happily seems 
to have been no human life lost, among the varied accidents. 



INCIDENTS OF THE STORM. 141 

Of lesser incideats, every passer-by has something to 
tell, A party of children who were out ''huckleberry- 
mg " on the mountain, were separated from home by the 
swollen brook, and one of them nearly drowned in vainly 
attempting to cross it. Their parents and friends, out 
all night in search of them, suffered painfully from 
anxiety. An aged farmer and his wife, who had been to 
Newburgh, " shopping," and were returning with their 
two-horse wagon well laden with goods for themselves 
and neighbors, attempted to drive over a bridge as it 
unsettled with the current, and were precipitated head- 
long. The old man caught a sapling, as he went down 
with the flood, the old woman holding on to his coat- 
skirts, and so they struggled until their cries brought the 
neighbors to their assistance. A gentleman's horse and 
wagon were overwhelmed by the torrent, close to the 
Cornwall Landing, and swept into the Hudson. 

The flood was at its highest as night came on ; and, 
quite unaware, myself, of what its ravages had been in 
the brook-valley parallel to ours (of which Cornwall 
Landing is the foot), I started for my usual early ride on 
horseback the next morning, supposing Idlewild to have 
been the principal sufferer, and deferring the survey of 
my ruins and desolations till exercise and breakfast should 
brighten hope a little. The sight of the new and tremen- 
dous gulf which seemed to have split open the side of the 



142 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

mountain beyond, drew me in that direction, but I was 
soon stopped. The road, our smoothest and most travel- 
led one, was crossed by a chasm, impassable except by 
climbing on foot ; and, down the descent of the valley lay 
a succession of overthrown barns and sheds, broken 
vehicles, mill-wheels, boards and logs, the largest building 
on the way to the village completely disembowelled, and 
the stream still coursing violently between its two halves 
of ruins. I was stopped, as I scrambled along the gorge, 
by a curious picture for a common highway. The brick 
front of the basement of a dwelling-house had been torn 
off, and the mistress of the house was on her hands and 
knees, with her head thrust in from a rear window, ap- 
parently getting her first look down into the desolated 
kitchen from which she had fled in the night. A man 
stood in the middle of the floor, up to his knees in water, 
looking round in dismay, though he had begun to pick up 
some of the overset chairs and utensils. The fire-place, 
with its interrupted supper-arrangements ; the dressei 
with its plates and pans, cups and saucers ; the closeta 
and cupboards with their various stores and provisions, 
were all laid open to the road like a sliced water-melon. 
Expression of faces and all, it would have made a subject 
for Hogarth. 

Of the scene at Cornwall (tlije mouth of the gorge 
where the torrent found its outlet), I must defer the 



THE DELUGE EXPLAINED. 143 

the description until I am able to speak with more cer- 
tainty of the extent of the heavy damages to property — 
but nothing could well be more picturesque (if one may 
admire picturesque disaster) than the inhabitants of the 
village, that morning, picking out their furniture and 
fixings from the overset buildings and from the bed of 
the subsiding waters. Every one, as he waded and 
worked, had his thrilling story of escape or risk to tell 
in a sentence ; and, losers as all were by the visitation, I 
could not help remarking that there was a keen excite- 
ment which amounted to a suppressed relish of its adven- 
tures. "That man," said one of my neighbors, pointing 
to a stout, laboring Yankee, of the invincible cut, "was 
taken off his legs last night." " Yes," said the man, with 
a look of no-you-don't, " hut not hurt. Mister ! I can be 
carried down stream, like any other man — but I can't be 
melted nor drowned, nohow I" 

By this storm and flood, common life and long expe- 
rience were, for once, taken entirely by surprise. The 
"oldest inhabitant" does not remember such a deluo-e ; 
and it was probably a chance phenomenon that might not 
again happen in a lifetime — the aggregation of extensive 
masses of clouds into what is sometimes called a " water- 
spout,^^ by the meeting of winds upon the converging edge 
of our bowl of Highlands. The storm for a whole 
country was thus concentrated, and broke upon the sum- 



144 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

mil of a single mountain. Old Butter-Hill was swept 
of a covering of soil and rocks, unstirred before since the 
Biblical Deluge ; and the two glens of Cornwall and 
Idlewild — ravines which have been channelled out by the 
wear of waters for ages, but which, since memory, have 
been the freshet-and-drought-varying beds of small brooks, 
well studied and thought manageable by millers and 
farmers — were filled in one hour, as if by the return of 
long-post powerful rivers to beds which, in their imme- 
morial absence, had become cultivated valleys. 



MILK IN DANGER. 145 



LETTER XXII. 

Gectlcman towing a Cow — Daughter takea out in the Storm to see the 
Freshet — Tlie Power of a Flood — Lofty Bridge Swept Away — Extent of Deso- 
lation, &c., &c. 

Augmt 20, 1S53. 

The Idlewild experiences, during the one-hour flood 
which came Imck like au old love, last week (like a 
re-awakened river, that is to say, rushiug madly back to 
a deserted valley, where its return had been long thought 
impossible), were of mingled sublimity and inconvenience. 
My first intimation that there was anything uncommon 
in the brook, was the sight of a gentleman in a boat, 
towing a cow across the meadow, under our library 
window — a green glade, seldom or never flooded, and in 
the centre of which our own cow had been all day, 
tethered and grazing. Our neighbor's evening's milk had 
been evidently rescued from a torrent ; but where it came 
from (as it had just begun to rain), or what had become 
of the member of my family who had been thus subjected 
to a restraint that made no provision for extraordinary 
circumstances, I was puzzled to conjecture. The roar 

7 



146 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

from the foaming precipices of the glen had been heard 
by us all, but thought to be thunder. So sudden a dis- 
aj^pearance of cow and meadow, everything under water 
except the trees, was a startling change to take place 
between two looks out of the window. 

The Opera, of which this was the overture, was too 
attractive to be missed. The nested birds, who could 
look down from their private boxes, and my little 
daughter, with her opera toilette of India-rubber cape 
and short petticoats, were all of the audience except 
myself, probably, who were likely to appreciate the 
acting and music — though "the million" were there, in 
the shape of rain-drops as big as thimbles, filling gallery 
and parterre in crowds somewhat unceremonious and 
uncomfortable. 

But — what a drawing-up of the curtain, as we made 
our way along the overhanging lobbies of the glen ! The 
rocky chasm — in which the brook, with any freshet I had 
heretofore seen, was still only a deep-down stream — 
seemed, now, too small for the torrent. Those giddy 
precipices, on which the sky seems to lean, as you stand 
below, were the foam-lashed sides of a full and mighty 
river. The spray broke through the tops of the full- 
grown willows and lindens. As the waves plunged 
against the cliffs, they parted and disclosed the trunks 
and torn branches of the large trees they had over- 



POWER OF TUE FLOOD. lit 

whelmed and were bearing away ; and the earth-colored 
flood, in the wider places, was a struggling mass of 
planks, timber, rocks, and roots — tokens of a tumultuous 
ruin above, to which the thunder-shower pouring around 
us gave but a feeble clue. With the unyielding and con- 
£ning sides of the glen — two hundred feet of descent 
even within the short space of our own cottage grounds, 
all walled in with precipices of sheer rock — the swollen 
deluge seemed infuriated to madness. With all my memo- 
ries of swift Trenton and slow Niagara, I had never 
before received such an impression of the power of a 
flood. A heavy-limbed willow, which overhung a rock 
on which I had often sat to watch the freshets of spring, 
rose up while we looked at it, and with a surging heave, 
as if lifted by an earthquake, toppled back, and was 
swept rushingly away. One old tree, dead for many a 
winter, but whoso tall and leafless trunk stood like a 
steeple against our most giddy cliff — its roots apparently 
never reached by the crest of the most swollen freshet — 
was playing backwards and forwards among the trees 
that overhung it, lashed like a willow-twig by a child's 
hand. The twilight was closing in too fast for me to 
await its downfall, but it was doubtless near. There 
was no trace of it, nor of the mingled earth and rock in 
which it was imbedded, the morning after. 

In throwing a rude foot-bridge across one of the rapids 



148 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

of our cascades, I had given it (by the advice of an old 
resident) what was thought to be rather an imaginary 
elevation— some ten feet above the highest remembered 
surface of the stream. But, as my little companion 
turned the corner of the rocky shelf-path which leads 
around the cliff to the ledge on which the bridge rested, 
I drew her suddenly back. The foam was plunging 
against the upper limit of the precipice, the body of the 
flood high above where the bridge had stood, and every 
vestige of it, of course, long since swept away. Over the 
dams and embankments, paths and rock-seats upon which 
I had expended love, money, and labor for a year, the 
heaviest body of the flood now poured, uninterrupted. 
The glen which I had made passable and habitable, was 
the wilderness of a torrent scarce approachable; and, 
to-day, with the flood fallen, and the grandeur of its 
desolation embellishing it no more, it is indeed a desert 
to my eye. The green spots are covered with loose 
stones and drift-wood ; the noble trees, stripped of their 
bark, are already withering in their massive tops ; rocks 
that were velveted with tendrils and moss, are now bare 
or bleak with leafless stems, and the broad meadows 
below are wastes of gravel and flood-rubbish. The stars 
are still above us, the mountains still around us, the 
brook singing as if nothing had happened— but it will 
take years to make Idlewild as beautiful again. 



AWFUL CALAMITY. 149 



LETTER XXIII. 

Young Lady killed by Lightning at our Neighbor's House — Another Paralyzed — 
Careless General Attention to such Fearful Events, &c., <fec. 

August 27, 1353. 

A STARTLING Calamity breaks iu upou this limited history 
of what happens at a home. Close to our gate — at the 
door of one of our nearest and most valued neighbors — a 
lovely girl was yesterday struck dead by lightning. A 
friend who stood with her at the moment, a youug married 
lady whom she had come to visit, was a greater suflferer, 
in being prostrated by the same flash, and paralyzed from 
the waist downwards — her life spared at the cost of tor- 
tures inexpressible. It is hard to make a record of this 
— fitly, I mean — for the saddened reading of those around 
us, and the careless reading of the public at large. It 
was paragraphed in the city papers, and read this morn- 
ing by thousands who have already forgotten it. Yet to 
us, who saw the flash and trembled at the thunder — to 
us, who, but just before, had seen the victim, surrounded 
by friends, happy and admired — the hush and gloom of 
the calamity now brooding around us, and a feeling as if 



150 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

we must still grasp and fold our own precious ones shel- 
tcringly to our bosoms — it is an event for which common 
and passing mention is not enough. Strong words crowd 
up to tell it, though, to the hurrying world, with the 
claims of new and present moments beckoning them on, 
this mentioning of an ''accident" again is but repetition 
— a recalling of what was flung to the Past with yes- 
terday. 

The household from which this finger of lightning 
plucked its victim, numbered, at the time, as many as 
fifty-six persons ; and they were mostly in sight, grouped 
about upon the grounds in front of the house, the sultry 
heat, at the close of the Sabbath afternoon, having 
brought every one out of doors. The venerable mansion, 
opened in summer to boarders, has been the residence of 
the same family almost from time immemorial. It is a 
large-spread and picturesque old house, so buried in trees 
and vines that you can hardly see a corner of it, and its 
aged but active and beloved mistress (a widow of 
eighty, and sister of the venerable friend and neighbor 
of whom I have before spoken) was seated under the 
willows which form the avenue to the front porch, and 
fell backwards with the shock of the fatal flash. The 
troop of children, several of her own grandchildren among 
them, who were around her upon the benches and green- 
sward, had been, but a moment before, out upon the 



THE SWIFT- WINGED SUMMONS. 151 

grassy hillock where the stroke fell, but were sent towards 
the house to avoid the coming shower. The telegraph- 
wires, which collected and pointed the stroke, hung in a 
relaxed curve within six feet of the summit of this hil- 
lock (a favorite play-ground for the children), and the 
fluid here entered the ground, though the adjoining 
posts and wires for half a mile were shivered and torn 
apart. 

The sky was darkening, but scarce a drop of rain had 
yet fallen. Miss Gilmour had been chatting with a hand- 
some boy-admirer, but left him to take aside the con- 
fidential friend whose guest she was, that she might read 
her a letter. It was from her mother (a widow with 
this only daughter), and related to some visit about 
which the moment was seized for a girlish taking of 
counsel. They passed out of the gate, crossed the road 
to be out of hearing, and stood under the telegraph-wire, 
where the letter was opened. Her lips were scarce 
parted to read, when the flash came — an arrow of intense 
light, shooting along the wire and blindmg those who 
Stood watching them. A scream of piercing agony arose 
with the crash of the thunder. A look towards the glare 
— one of those whom they had seen a moment before, 
lying prostrate, the other upon her knees with hands 
struggling wildly upwards — and the truth was revealed. 
From joyous life, health and beauty, every pulse beating 



152 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

with the promise of as happy a morrow, that young 
creature had been summoned in an instant, 

So complete an extinction of Hfe in an instant is doubt- 
less a merciful sparing of the usual pain of death. The 
countenance of Miss Gilmour showed no suffering. Faint 
purple streaks followed the veins upon the left side, and 
the skin was slightly broken upon the left hand and the 
left foot ; but the person was not otherwise disfigured. 
A recovery from a partial injury by lightning, however, 
is probably as severe pain as could well be endured. The 
escape of the electric fluid from the body suddenly sur- 
charged with it, is described by the surviving companion 
of Miss Gilmour as a fierce and scorching issue of fire 
from every pore. With what power of thought remained 
to her she imagined it to be the sudden beginning of the 
anguish inconceivable of another world. The paralysis 
of her limbs, though complete for a while, yielded ulti- 
mately to medical treatment, and she is likely to regain 
the use of them, partially at least ; though the nervous 
system is doubtless shattered beyond remedy. How 
difficult it must be, through the tears of such suffering 
and sorrow as are crowded together by an event like 
this, to see where those recompenses are, which, philoso- 
phers tell us, make human allotments equal ! 



A DILEMMA. 153 



LETTER XXIY. 

Dilemma as to Placing Settees — Double Service of out-of-door Seats — Difference 
Between Appreciation of Landscape by Men and by Women — Right of all 
Strangers to enter Beautiful Grounds — Favor of being Figures on the Land- 
scape — Ac, &c. 

September 8,1853. 

WnETHER to be beautiful or to control beauty — 
whether to be admired or to enjoy that which is admira- 
ble — are questions I have been puzzled to settle this 
morning, not for young gentlemen and ladies commencmg 
their destiny, but for a half dozen out-of-door settees 
The angel of arrangement who decides it for 2ts — (making 
some of us plain and obscure but blissfully appreciative, 
and some of us conspicuous or beautiful and that is all) 
— was never more bothered than I, nor ever wished more 
heartily that the unconscious beginners had sense enough 
to make the choice judiciously for themselves. On one. 
spot of my lawn, the seat would itself be a picture ; on 
another spot, it would itself be almost out of sight, but 
would command a good point of view for those who 
should sit upon it. 

Half the dilemma is in the unusual beauty of the set- 



154 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I I- D . 

tees. As when an Earl and his Countess play ushers to 
the goods and merchandise which England sends to the 
Exhibition, one is terribly be-Sedgwicked to know how 
to dispose of so unaccustomed a feature. It is the edge 
of a new epoch, however — the useful enlisting the orna- 
mental — and the Berrians are teaching us, with their vast 
warehouse of similar wonders, that utility and beauty 
may be linked in everything. Lady Ellesmere and 601 
Broadway are on the crest of the same wave of progress. 
Rural seats, I find, may be made to perform double 
service. They are sign-posts saying, " Stop here, where 
the view is beautiful " — giving the stranger, at the same 
time, a chance to repose. And this need not be credited 
altogether to a spirit of accommodation. One gets jealous 
for the beauty of grounds he has laid out, and landscapes 
to which views have been opened through his trees and 
shrubbery. As I sit writing, now, at my window (a 
covert one, crowded in between an astonished hemlock 
and a yellow pine), I see a party of ladies from one of 
the boarding-houses in the neighborhood. They are 
taking their usual stroll after breakfast — their broad 
straw hats, flowing dresses and gay parasols embellishing 
the foreground of my prospect with an effect that Kensett's 
pencil could scarce improve. They are of course " charm 
ing women" (judging by charming ones I have known 
who were similarly dressed), and I could not sit patiently 



WOMEN LOVE THE BEAUTIFUL. 155 

here, if there were any probability that they would pass 
those three openings in the lawn, without stopping to 
look out upon the river. But, thank Heaven, there is no 
probabihty of it. Thank Heaven, there is scarce such a 
thing as a woman insensible to the beauties of Nature. 
Men are— often I have had curious opportunity to observe 
the difference, living where I do. Fifty strangers a day, 
perhaps, ramble through this open-air gallery of pictures; 
and, knowing every turning of a path where they should 
stop to see a landscape, I observe easily whether they 
are walking with Nature or with themselves only. One 
man out of three strolls past the different openings to 
the glen and river without turning his head; while, in the 
whole summer, I have scarce seen one lady pass them, 
who did not loiter, lift her hand to point into the distance, 
or make some exclamation of pleasure. Such love of 
beauty is a getting ready for Heaven, I more and more 
believe. Women are better than we. 

I may as well take the opportunity, by the way, to 
say a word, here, upon a point that seems to be variously 
understood in our new country. Strangers, coming to 
Idlewild, often send to the cottage-door, to inquire 
" whether a stroll through the glen would be any intru- 
sion." A beautiful boy — so beautiful, that, as he stood 
upon a rock by one of the water-falls, he left a picture 
there which the sight of the rock mil always recall to mo 



156 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

— said he had " often wanted to stroll through the glen, 
but that his uncle, with whom he had driven past the 
gate, would not go into any man's grounds with whom he 
was not acquainted." Why, my sweet fellow, it would 
be time for a new deluge, if any bright spot on the sur- 
face of the world could be so shut from you ! No I no I 
There is no such " right of property " possible in a repub- 
lic. Fence out pigs, we may — if we know how, and no- 
body leaves the gate open — but, to fence out a genial 
eye from any corner of the earth which Nature has lov- 
ingly touched with that pencil which never repeats itself 
— to shut up a glen or a waterfall for one man's exclusive 
knowing and enjoying — to lock up trees and glades, shady 
paths and haunts along rivulets — it would be an em- 
bezzlement by one man of God's gift to all. A capitalist 
might as well curtain off a star, or have the monopoly of 
an hour. Doors may lock, but out-doors is a freehold to 
feet and eyes. 

And — it seems to me — the favor is on the other side 
The figures in a landscape are half its beauty. 
"Grounds" are embellished by groups, and by waving 
dresses and moving forms, to a degree a painter well 
understands, Idlewild (I am eager to say) is never so 
lovely as when its tangled wood-paths, and rocky laby- 
rinths, lawn-walks and avenues, meadow-glades and rustic 
seats are alive with the boys from the school near by. 



MOVING PICTURES. 15^ 

and with the gentlemen and ladies, nurses and children, 
of our neighborhood so populous in summer. I look from 
my window, or from the crags and terraces which give 
glimpses of the glen, and see pictures which these uncost- 
ly statues and graceful moving objects endlessly vary. 
The gain is mme. 



158 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD 



LETTER XXV. 

A Wet September— Effect on Trees— Freshets— Dam-building— Nature's Lesson 
in Water-power, &c., &c. 

L September 10, 1853. 

By the almanac, September is upon us — but the trees 
seem quite confused as to the time of year. So much wet 
weather has brought back April again. The elms, at least, 
are putting out, for a second tune, their demonstrations of 
tender green — a midsummer budding which I had thought 
denied to all nature's productions except well preserved 
gentlemen and ladies. How these faintly verdant and 
scarce developed new leaves, which are thus venturing out 
from the edges of the old branches, are to encounter the 
rough handling of the October frost that will soon be 
upon them, I have some curiosity to see. Will they 
pinch and wrinkle up with a sudden paralysis, or will 
they brighten into the gloomy colors of Autumn, and die 
off gracefully and by willing gradations, like leaves that 
have properly observed times and seasons ? 

I notice that the hemlocks have also had a second bud- 
ding. The evergreens, generally, have thriven beyond 



TAMING A FRESH KT. 159 

all remembered precedent, with the continued wetness ; 
and the white pines, particularly, have spread their new 
tassels into such enormous brooms as to be the subject of 
common remark among the farmers. There are trees 
which need more sunshine, however. The chestnuts and 
oaks have not attained more than half their usual thick- 
ness of leaves this summer. The butternuts are prema- 
turely w^ithering. Maples and birches look hke Novem- 
ber already. Half the inhabitants of the woods at least 

need something warmer than water, occasionally. 

******* 

Freshets do a great deal of work ; and it has been 
rather surprising to me, this summer, living for the first 
time on the edge of so tempestuous a torrent-path, that 
the taming and getting of this irregular but most efficient ' 
power into harness, is not more studied by those who suf- 
fer so severely by it while unsubdued. The flood, of 
which I recorded the ravages a week or two ago, is esti- 
mated to have injured property, in the two glens through 
which the water-spout discharged itself, to the amount of 
twenty thousand dollars. Yet it did what one of my 
neighbors calls a " a five-hundred dollar job " for me — 
a job I have often calculated the cost of, and reUnquishcd 
as too expensive, but which I supposed could only be done 
by the patient labor of men and oxen. Had I known as 
much of freshet-power, and the way it works, as I now 



160 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

do, I could have pre-arranged the "job" which is thus 
done accidentally — could have set a trap, that is to say, 
for a cloud-team, that would draw more stone for me in a 
night (for nothing) than an ox-team would draw in six 
months at three dollars a-day. 

While I am making these industrial statistics of the 
money-saving and stone-drawing uses of water, the Tri- 
hune (of August 31) comes to hand, containing an erro- 
neous statement as to the result of a lesser employment 
of the same element by me. Thus says the Washington 
correspondent of our leading daily paper : — 

'' The President is fond of display, and is rather foppish in his 
tastes and style of dress. For instance, he has his hair oiled and 
curled after the fashion of N. P. Willis, and frequently receives 
visiters in the morning in an embroidered tunic, or semi-robe de- 
chambre, such as is worn by the flash and fancy men of New York, 
supposed and said to be kept by women. His taste for di-ess and 
equipage may be traced also to the company he keeps. Pierce 
Butler, the ex-husband of Fanny Kemble, is his most intimate 
friend and associate, and, next to Caleb Gushing and the ladies, 
occupies more of his time and attention than anything else." 

Now, I may not only rescue the waters of Idlewild 
from the reproach of setting an example to the Chief Ma- 
gistrate which is in any way artificial or effeminate, but it 
may also furnish Mr. Bancroft with an historical item as 
to the economy and simplicity of republican models, if I 



THREE FACTS. IGl 

record three facts : — First. The humble head which his 
Excellency the President is thus authentically declared 
to have selected for his imitation, has hitherto known no 
external culture or embellishment beyond a daily souse in 
cold water — never, to my knowledge, having been touched 
by oil, pomatum, curling fluid, curling-tongs, or other on- 
guent, art or emollient. Second. It has never known even 
the permitted luxury of hair-dresser or barber, having 
been cut from boyhood till now, whenever and wherever 
it was inconveniently long, by scissors in my own hands. 
Third. Its daily ofiQciation as a model for the President 
(though I was wholly unaware, hitherto, of having ever been 
seen by his Excellency) is performed without crest, plume, 
or Uvery, it being known to friends and neighbors by the 
covering of a straw hat — which straw hat, I may add, is 
now near the close of its wear for a second summer, and 
was bought in the village of Xewburgh for eighteen cents. 

Dear friends of the Tribune (P. S.), I should like to 
be believed to grow old. "Willing to serve my country 
in any way, I am honored to have the outside of my head 
chronicled as a copy for the President, though I would 
rather it were the inside that were a copy for the school- 
boy. If you will strew my secluded path with mistaken 
roses^ however, I must be excused for such drops of otto- 
biography as the truth compels me to distil. 

But let me describe my experiences of freshet-power : — 



162 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

The blemish in the beauty of Idlewild, when I first 
began to track it with a path, was a spot where the two 
precipitous walls of the ravine widened at a ford. It had 
come very nearly being the gem of the scenery fbr twenty 
miles around — a green terrace jutting out from the preci- 
pice on either side like two sites of cottages, vis-a-vis, a 
chasm between and darkly wooded cliffs rising behind — but 
in the far-down bottom, at low water, lay a shallow pool. 
With the spread of the channel, the brook here lost its 
swiftness, and the retarded ripple left an ooze which there 
was no time (between freshets) to grass — a frame of rock 
and foliage around a picture of mud. 

How remedy this defect ? — for it was a daily fret to my 
eye. I sought my most trusted Egeria — shirt-sleeve ad- 
vice. Dam-buOders and wall-layers, pickers and pilers, 
took a look at it. The " prettiest thing," as they ex- 
pressed themselves, would be to build out the lower ter- 
race, so as to shove the stream up against the opposite 
Tvall — confining it so that its force would perpetually clean 
its channel, while, at the same time, the terrace would be 
extended to " quite a lot." And, with the deep-down 
softness of light upon this hidden lawn — a table with a 
cloth of green velvet at the bottom of a well — I longed 
for this perfecting of my Paradise. But the cost ! With 
the headway of descent with which the flood sometimes 
came to that opening, Windsor Castle would scarce be 



nature's lesson. 163 

" rocks enough to stop it." Oxen alone could move the 
material that would be required, and " five-hundred loads 
upon a stone-boat wouldn't begin to be enough." And 
where to get the stone, and how to draw it over those 
crags and precipices 1 

Xo, we must do the best thing — build a little dam be- 
low, and cover the ooze with still water. It cost a trifle 
compared with the estimate for the other job — twenty 
dollars, perhaps. But a pond may be too small for 
poetry. The picturesque becomes puddle-esque (does it 
not, Kensett ?) when reduced to, say, less than an acre. 
In water's beauty, as in that of women, tranquillity is a 
grace for large surfaces — small bodies of either looking 
best in motion. I had only negatived a defect by putting 
the mud out of sight with my little pond, leaving the 
splendid capability of what it might be (with swift water 
around the rock edge of that hidden lawn) wholly unde- 
veloped. 

But nature was, meantime, contriving a lesson for us. 
Over my small dam, spanning the breadth of the ravine, 
the stream cascaded in an even and indolent sheet — no 
wise head having suggested to me, that, if it were opened 
in the middle, like the nose of a pitcher, the escaping 
water would leave the two sides bolder for a freshet-trap, 
thus stopping the rocks which might else tumble over. 
And with the first rush of the torrent (from the water- 



164 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

spout that broke recently with such unprecedented volume 
in our mountains), a gigantic tree came down end-wise, 
like a catapult, taking out the middle of my dam as if 
discharged at a target, and so forming it into the unsug- 
gested assistance which the freshet required. It was a 
flood, indeed. I have elsewhere described it. The mis- 
chief it did to my paths and bridges, roads and meadows, 
was great. But it brought down the five-hundred cart-loads 
of rocks that I wanted, and (with a check from the dam- 
trap of which I have just spoken) piled them evenly and 
sohdly over the area of the pond — enlarging my ter- 
race with stone enough to build a cathedral, and walHng 
up the scattered brook in a deep and rocky channel at the 
foot of the precipice. It needs but earthing and grass- 
ing now, to complete a picture which the artist's imagina- 
tion could scarce have conjured. But we liked not to have 
It done — though, as I said before, I could have contrived 
it with the teaching from a similar lesson elsewhere ; and 
this mention of it should be read as a contribution to the 
cause of labor-saving. With the increasing cost and 
trouble of Paddy-power, such digging and carrying as a 
freshet will do (a freshet that does not bargain, either, 
for the extra of a horse or w^agon on Sunday) is worth 
the study of at least one man in every valley with a mill- 
stream. 



DESTINY OF HEMLOCKS. 165 



LETTER XXVI. 

Wet Seasons Unfavorable to Ilenilocks — The First Inland Mile on the Hudson — 
The American Malvern and Chelteubam — The Steamboat Landing a Fashion- 
able Resort— The Highland Gap at Sunset, &c. 

September 17, 1S53. 

Well — even hemlocks are not allowed to be too happy ! 
One tree may not long out-bloom or be more admired than 
another — vegetable envy will, perhaps, be happy to 
hear. It was only a week ago that I was recording the 
unprecedented impulse given to the spread and beauty of 
the hemlocks, by the wetness of the season. With oaks 
paling from lack of sunshine, chestnuts thinning, and 
maples, hickories, and butternuts prematurely undressing 
for autumn, the evergreens did but brighten and wax glo- 
rious — particularly this one so hated by carpenters. Its 
destiny — to be idly beautiful, and have no other history 
on the page of lumber — was unequivocally smiled on by 
nature, the merely ornamental tree exultingly prospered 
above the exemplarily-usefuls. Idlewild ventured to be 
happy at this (with nature alone responsible), for we are 
little but a wilderness of fir-trees ; and, to our new cot- 
tage, in the midst of seventy acres of hemlock good-for- 



166 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

nothingness, it seemed a special dispensation. My thought- 
peg, especially — the pyramid of emerald fir-tassels, which 
lifts its beautiful idleness before the window where I scrib- 
ble — was as light green, when September came in, as 
when called upon to play May-morning for the more re- 
spectable leaves belated. 

But at the close of last week, a sprinkling of yellow 
was observable in these brilliant masses of fir-foliage. 
While the outer edges of the new shoots were still of 
an unseasonably soft green, twigs near the truuk were 
evidently dying. Seeing it, at first, only in the groves 
about the house, I attributed it to the artificiahziug of the 
wild soU by the removal of the underbrush and the ma- 
nuring for grass and clover — evergreens (they say) 
dwindling, like the North American Indian, wi^ the re- 
finements of kaiighty-cultwve, and retaining their strength 
and beauty only by reproduction from their own ele- 
ments ; from a soil left unenriched about them, or rather 
from such stuff for renewal as falls only with the stir of 
their own breeze-obeying branches. I was still musing 
on the apparent contradiction in the laws of nature — the 
Aztec priesthood and the Porttiguese nobihty dwarfing 
and dwindling by this same "marrying in and in" which 
seemed to be the only strength of the Indian and the fir- 
tree — when a drive back into the country, showed me 
that the blight was universal. The hemlocks in the wild- 



AGENCY OF DECAY IN TREES. I6t 

est places were sprinkled with twigs of decaying yellow, 
like those in my own grounds. Excess of growth, and 
the continuance of tender bark and flowing sap — profit- 
iugs by this particular tree, from the moisture of the 
season — have proved (it seems to me, after examining the 
dead stems) an attraction for a destructive insect. The 
twigs that have turned yellow, are hollow, Uke reeds, the 
sap, apparently, eaten out for the passage of the worm. 

Since writing the above, I have found a record, in 
Downing's Horticulturist, of a similar blight upon spruce 
trees in England, in 1845 — the cause the same, though 
the agency of the blight is not attributed to an insect. 
Downing quotes an account of it from Professor Lindley, 
the botanist, who communicated it to the " Gardener's 
Chronicle." The season had been " a very rainy one, and 
had caused an exceedingly gross and luxuriant growth." 
To this cause Dr. Lindley attributes the unusual signs of 
disease. He says, " We do not recognize in these symp- 
toms anything incompatible with a watery condition of 
last year's wood ; arising not so much from excess of 
water, as from want of heat and light to carry it out of 
the system. Under these circumstances it may easily be 
conceived that the resinous secretions, necessary to the 
health of coniferous trees, were inadequately deposited ; 
and that, now, when growth recommences, the young 
leaves cannot find in their neighborhood their food, or 



168 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

orginazable matter, in such a state that they can assimi- 
late it. The result must necessarily be that the foliage 
will drop off, and, in such cases, the wood will die back, 
or prove permanently diseased." • 

At Blackheath, the whole of the foliage was falling off 
from the spruces and larches, and, though new branches 
were breaking out, they were so few that the trees would 
have to be removed. Dr. Lindley says, '' An alarm has 
arisen as to these symptoms of unusual disease among 
plants, lest such general affections in the vegetable world 
should be forerunners of like plagues in the animal." (?) 
* 'k * * * 

I am afraid we are desthied to be fashionable, after 
all. The beaux and belles of our neighborhood have, 
during the present season, organized their times and 
places for display to a degree premonitory of a coming 
Saratoga. It was a destiny to have been foreseen, from 
the utilitarian reasons that always lie at the bottom of 
the attractions of fashionable resorts. The Mouth of the 
Moodna marks the first Inland mile on the Hudson. 
The nearest spot to New York for complete change of 
climate — the first village beyond the Highland gap of 
the mountains which wall off the Seaboard — the readiest 
refuge for the delicate of lungs (and an atmosphere, 
indeed, that has already become a regular prescription 
with physicians of the city), is this rural terrace above 



THE FUTURE FORESHADOWED. 169 

the Landing at Cornwall. The villages of Moodna and 
Canterbury are to be the Malvern and Cheltenham of 
America — health-resorts to which Fashion (with its need 
of an excuse) is sure to follow. We may as well make 
up our minds to it — though, to tell the truth, Idlewild 
had thought itself more in a corner than it is likely now 
to be. Not that I complain. The mineral springs, a 
mile or two back among the hills, are waiting for their 
Priesnitz ; and the bright spirits, that soonest wear out 
will come hither for health — a charming promise for our 
society. Paiuters will come here for landscapes — profes- 
sional men for exercise and inspiriting intercourse with 
Nature — youth for schooling amid pure aii* and ennobling 
scenery — strangers from other lands, for repose from 
travel within reach of the city and its news. It will be 
pleasantly populous, this Highland Terrace. There will 
be something to rejoice at, besides money-making, in 
what is drawn together by its attractions. 

But " first steps " are interesting to read of, and this 
year's indication of a fashionable resort may be usefully 
chronicled for reference in our history hereafter. The 
public want which is supplied by a Hyde Park in 
London, and by the Champs-Elysees at Paris — a resort 
for those who have vehicles and leisure — has expressed 
itself, and found time and place. On the Landing at Corn- 
wall you may now see at the twilight hour, the " respect-* 

8 



ItO LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

ability " as well as the fashion and gaiety of our rural 
neighborhood. The swift steamer Alida, which leaves 
New York at four in the afternoon, arrives here between 
six and seven ; and on board are husbands and brothers, 
lovers, visitors and parcels. There is excuse enough for 
any vehicle to be tliere. It is, besides, just the hour 
when the light is ** becoming " for uubonnetted beauty. 
The time for the boat's arrival varies a little with wind 
and tide, and, for a half hour previous, there is a gay 
pouring down of visitors to the little dock at Cornwall. 
Each boarding-house has its carry-all, and a brilliant load 
of young ladies with uncovered heads. Of private 
carriages there is a liberal sprinkling, and, of female 
equestrians, with their attendant cavaliers, not a few. 
The long tie-pole is first occupied with Ciosely packed 
horses' heads, and then the later arrivals are distributed 
back over the open area of the wharf, making a crowd of 
carriages, that, with the gaily-dressed people and the 
interchange of visits, is as like a ^^ soiree on wheels" as 
the Cascine at Florence. Not the least interesting 
feature of it, to me, however, is one not seen at the 
Cascine — a free mixture of the laboring classes of the 
neighborhood in this lively half-hour and its sights. 
Among the loads of pretty girls, the shirt-sleeves take 
their walk, with full liberty to admire. And in a country 
' where industry and intelligence are the steps for equality 



CORNWALL LANDING AT SUNSET 171 

and companionship with what is thus admired, the infla 
ence is salutary. 

Gaiety and fashion aside, however, and looked at with 
a painter's eye only, the scene at the arrival of that 
steamer is well worth taking some trouble to see. No 
river and mountain scenery in the world has a spot which 
surpasses the gap through the Highlands, in the sunset 
light It is wondrously beautiful, as seen from the 
thronged dock of Cornwall at that hour — the cloud- 
touching amphitheatre of mountains flooded with rosy 
light, and a broad mirror of bright water at its base ; 
and then the magnificent spectacle of the handsomest 
boat on the river, suddenly rounding the wooded point 
and dashing up to the wharf with her gay streamers and 
crowded decks I It is a sight which makes an enliven- 
ing close, indeed, to a day in the country. 



112 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER XXVII. 

Highway Pigs — Giving the Old Woman a Ride — Her Favorite Jemmy — Pork and 
Poets — Common Folks' Knowledge of Neighbors — Letter from a Correspon- 
dent, &c., &c. 

» 

October 1, 1S53. 

I MENTALLY took back, to-daj, some of my strong, lan- 
guage on the subject of highway pigs. It was somewhat 
an unexpected retrocession, too ; for, coming out from 
my gate, on the river side, I had found some thrifty clo- 
ver, which had been sown around the posts on the road- 
side, completely rooted up by snou^is that should, at least, 
have had rings in them. With my home thus made slovenly 
and inelegant to the eye of the transient passer-by, I 
was making a large counter-charge of new happiness to 
which I had, by this new sorrow, become entitled, when 
I overtook an old woman loaded heavily with baskets and 
bundles. The look over her shoulder at the empty seat 
in my wagon would have been irresistible from the mere 
largeness of the favor — as she was doubtless bound to 
^ewburgh like myself, and a "lift'- would save her four 
miles of trudging in a hot sun, and the two tolls on the 



"jemmy" the pig. ns 

way ; but she was, to roe a volume in a library I love to 
dip into — a history of a life being lived, of which I and 
the recording angel would thus read the chapter of to-day. 
A true book, thus opened for one when he has attention 
to spare, and walking on its own legs afterwards away, 
would be a favor to the reader, you would suppose — yet 
this old woman got into my wagon to be read for a half 
hour, and was grateful to me ! How often the apparent 
givings of this complex life are thus secretly refunded with 
overpayings I 

Under my recent irritation, there was but one subject 
upon which I was likely to converse, and, as a neighbor's 
dog crossed the road in chase of a pig, I remarked upon 
the different fates of the different classes to which the two 
animals belonged — dogs and donkeys valued only before 
death, pigs and poets valued principally after. Whether 
or not the old woman fully comprehended the analogy be- 
tween pork and fame, she went immediately into the charac- 
ter of her pig '* Jemmy," giving him such life-time praise 
as made him clearly an exception to my theory. Ilis 
running loose upon the road, and fattening with no cost or 
trouble to her, his faithfulness to his j)en, his endurance 
of the dogs, and his innocent ways with the children, 
were described lovingly enough to make a live poet en- 
vious. Unpopular as he must needs be abroad, " Jeramy" 
was, at home, an idol. She stuck to the theme. It was 



It4 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

evident that the world, for her, might be divided into two 
equal parts — her pig and residue-dom. I regretted, I 
say, that I had been so general in my war upon the swine 
loose in ray neighborhood. If " Jemmy " has chanced to 
be among them, it would not be amends enough that I 
should relish him hereafter as pork — pork, which had thus 
made an old woman happy, having been, it seemed to me, 
deserving of respect while in pig. {Mem. to advocate 
considerateness towards stigmatized classes, and especially 
to pre-pork the poets who are yet to be cut up and sold.) 

The road I frequent, between Idlewild and Newburgh, 
has no public conveyance ; and there is, of course, an 
understanding, along its four or five miles, that a foot- 
passenger is entitled to a " lift," in any vehicle going '' his 
way " with a spare seat. In my plain wagon, with a pair 
of horses more useful than ornamental, I happily seem 
rather seeking company than bestowing any very great 
favor, in my daily pickings-up ; and, on that footing, men, 
women, and children are very communicative. If you could 
make the telegraph-wires drop down the secrets they arc 
carrying, as you drive under them, it would scarce be 
more voluminous — certainly less interesting. Common 
people think something — if they do not know something — 
about everybody within reach. In passing the villa of 
my magnificent neighbor "the Commodore," the other 



ROAD- SIDE GLEANINGS. 175 

day, " who keeps a yacht, and never drives the same car- 
riage twice," I was told (also), that he was ''worth ten 
cents a minute." My own house was pointed out to me 
as the residence of a man that "publishes a paper in 
poetry." The different wages that are made, the differ- 
ent ways of employing odd time, the experience in cows, 
pigs, and poultry, and the characters of the " chaps and 
girls," are matters that let in many a side-light upon my 
trips to Newburgh. I find the common air very much 
peopled with all this, and even our beautiful scenery very 
much socialized and varied. The landscape is lovelier, 
I find, when, under every chimney-smoke which I see back 
of us on the mountain, I think it probable I thus have 
an acquaintance. 

The new railroad which is to take us from Moodna to 
Newburgh in seven minutes, will, of course, displace the 
wagon-travel, and carry him, who is now a leisurely and 
chatty foot-passenger, in expeditious insignificance and 
silence. / shall be a loser by the " improvement.'^ 
Whether or not I see more correctly, while thus looking 
daily through the eyes of other kinds of people, I cer- 
ainly see afterwards much more freshly through my own. 
We have some flesh and blood, all of us, below books and 
telegraph-wires, which enjoys humble company best. It 
airs the ground-floor apartments of one's brain. 

From seeing how my children are interested in the 



116 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

company thus picked up on the road, or how much more 
even friends at table enjoy the most common history of 
the day's drive than things of more wisdom and moment, 
I have mused over what we are doing-away-Avith, of the 
interest of life, by the generalizing operation of "pro- 
gress." There was adventure and study of character in 
stage-coaches, which made travel more attractive before 
railroads were invented. As telegraphing becomes 
cheaper and more common, many a charming long letter 
will be economized down to a cold question or answer, 
written in a strange hand. Relief by schemes of (benevo- 
lence will turn many of the little romances of private 
charity into large subscriptions. We are quickening and 
extending the scope of life by removing its details as 
hindrances — but are not those details, in themselves, valu- 
able ? I shrink from being thus generalized away — my 
single pulses lumped into an apoplexy, for shortness. I 
shall go to Newburgh quicker and cheaper, it is true, 
when the enterprise of the country shall have completed 
the railroad — but I shall not go so pleasantly, perhaps, 
not so kindly or wisely, as in my wagon, with a spare seat 
for a stranger or neighbor. 

***** 

I have now and then a private letter which I grudge 
not giving to the public. Like the clerk at the " dead 
letter office," at Washington, who first takes out the. 



TOO GOOD TO LOSE. 17Y 

money, T should like to subtract at least what is valuable, 
from much which I am expected to destroy. Responses 
to Idlewild influences — of which I am gratified to know 
there are many — would naturally come from minds of 
"out-door" naturalness and liberality; and such will, 
even incidentally and carelessly, " scatter pearls." A 
letter has come in, at this moment, for instance, from a 
stranger who thus takes pen and ink to a thought-answer ; 
and he gives me a private-life sketch of the President 
(suggested by my recent allusion to him in one of these 
Idlewild pencillings), which, as not intended for publica- 
tion, and undoubtedly truthful and uninterested, it were a 
pity to lose. I shall shock my viewless mind-acquaintance 
by copying nearly the whole of his letter ; for it contains 
a tribute to the home influence of the Home Journal, 
which I am proud to record ; and it contains also a cor- 
roboration of our counsel from a correspondent as to the 
transplanting of evergreens, which may be valuable ; and 
some memorials of Webster, which are well worth pre- 
serving. Thus writes my viewless friend : — 

* * " Once ia five or six years I must write you a letter — not 
that I wish to force myself upon your notice, but to let you know 
we (my better half and myself) are still, and ever strongly inte- 
rested in everything that pertains to yourself. Each Sabbath 
morning — or earlier, if the business of the week permits — I find 
the Home Journal, and first read your letter from * Idlewild ;' but 

8* 



Its LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

frequently ' Lydia ' (that better half) has anticipated the reading, 
by repeating to me what it is about ; she finds a ' world of interest ' 
in your letters. * Idlewild ' to us, as doubtless to thousands of 
others, is as familiar in everything, except mere feet and rods, as 
our own native fields. We see through the medium (that you are) 
your untutored trees, cascades, glens, and the torrent, and its 
ravages, and yourself contemplating the scene from some invulner- 
able point, like yolney bending over his ' ruins,' or riding your 
pony along the winding paths, in pursuit of health and a glorious 
sunrise, or talking with a neighbor across the fence about the 
experiences of rural life. Indeed, your new habitation has a 
locality and a definiteness in our minds, like the remembrance 
of a city ' seen in a dream,' and if business should ever make it 
convenient for me to intrude myself there, and I should find the 
reality different from the image in my mind, it would occasion 
some sorrow. 

"I followed the directions of your correspondent respecting the 
tra7ispla7iting of evergreens, and had one set out in July — gave 
it but two waterings, and otherwise not the usual care, thinking 
the roots had been clipped so short that it would die at any rate, 
but it has never wilted, and is now growing. I have had four dif- 
ferent evergreens set out in the same place, either in the spring or 
fall, with better roots, bountiful watering, and they all died. I 
think the hint worthy of notice. 

" Frank Pierce's hair is most obstinately curly, and if there is 
much care bestowed upon it by himself or barber, it must be to 
straighten, not to curl it. The Washington correspondent of the 
Tribune is capable of writing some truth ; and it is a pity he thus 
strayed from it. The President is a man of much grace of person, 
as well as of mind (qualities which are found together more fre- 



PIERCE AND WEBSTER. 119 

quently than Nature has the credit for) ; and for the former, he 
has suffered some malicious criticisms. He is one of the * best 
walking men ' in the world. His manners are very easy and 
entirely natural. I speak of him as a lawyer at the bar, and 
as such I know him well. Though he has been very much 
abused by his political opponents, he has never replied to any 
of their charges, except when some other person's character was 
compromised. I speak of him previous to his nomination for the 
Presidency. He has been charged with nearly every crime in the 
criminal calendar. But, though not one of the formal moral 
men, those who know him as I and thousands of others do in this 
State, know that he has one of the best of hearts that animates the 
bosom of man. You may think I overrate Pierce, because I have 
had no acquaintance with great men ; and, though there may be 
some truth in this position, it is not wholly true : for it has been 
either my good or bad luck to know something personally of many 
of the very first-class of statesmen in the country ; and while I 
do not claim for Pierce the Webster rank as a statesman, I do claim 
that he is a frank and honest man, and a gentleman in all his 
deportment. 

" Is there not enough of interest in this vicinity to pay you for 
a visit here ? We are only a few hours' ride from the White Hills 
within seven miles of Kearsarg Mountain. Just below this — ten 
miles — is the island on which Mrs. Dunstiu killed the Indians. 
This, too, is the native place of Daniel Webster, and here are 
some men who knew him in his childhood, and hundreds who have 
known him intimately through all the days of his fame. The 
farm — two miles and a half from our village, in Salisbury — where 
tie was born, is still owned by the estate, he having purchased it 
Swo or three years since, and an exact copy of the immense elm 



180 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

which shades the well, adorns the diplomas of the State Agricul- 
tural Society. Two miles below, on the river-road to Concord, 
stands the old weather-beaten ' Tavern Stand,' which Mr. Web- 
ster's father occupied in Daniel's schoolboy days; and nearly 
opposite is the old-fashioned, plain, two-story dwelling which was 
occupied by Mr. Webster's father in his latter years, and by Mr. 
Webster on his visits to this place, which were as often as twice a 
year — he spending from one to five or six weeks each time, just as 
his business would admit. There are fifteen or twenty dwellings 
here occupied mostly by the old neighbors (and their descendants) 
of Mr. W. Everything in and about the late residence of the 
great man was neat and plain, and regulated in accordance with 
his wish. In the house everything is just as he left it a year ago 
— tables, chairs, books, maps and manuscripts are unmoved, except 
to dust them. The old-fashioned rocking-chair in which he habi- 
tually sat, with its back running off with a long, continuous 
sweep, and in which he might as well be said to lie as to sit, 
stands in its particular corner. And who is there that can look 
at these things, now, with indifference ? And opposite, and a 
little below, is the little, old, time-worn law oflBce in which Mr. 
Webster spent a few months, studying law with William Thomp- 
son ; and still further down, is the old and decaying ' white oak,' 
on which he * hung his scythe.^ This is called the * Elm Farm,' 
on account of the great number of large and beautiful elms that 
grow upon it. 

" I have extended my notes farther than I should have done had 
I not known you to be an admirer of Mr. Webster. 

" Is there nothing, I repeat, to pay you for a visit here ? I have 
a plate and a bed to spare, and an ' old John ' (horse) and a 
buggy, which shall be all at your service. Excuse this careless 



A FRIENDLY ENDING. 181 

writing, and be assured that there are warm hearts that beat for 
you in the Granite State. 
" Yours, with the best wishes for health and happiness." 



182 LETTERS FROM IDLBWILD. 



LETTER XXYIII. 

Autumnal Privileges— Extent of Personal Orbit— Dignity of a Daily Diameter — 
Difference between Saddle and Carriage-Riding— Health in a Nobody- 
bath, &c., &c. 

October 8, 1853. 

The autumnal coolness gives me back a certain 
spaciousness of personal dignity (if I may confess to, and 
analyze it), which the summer somewhat suspended or 
diminished. But, a word first upon the principle of 
Nature which I may hope to elucidate by the mention 
of it. 

The extent of the earth's surface which each animal 
personally inhabits, must, to a certain degree, I think, be 
a measure of his feeling of personal consequence. The 
snail's to-and-fro is, perhaps, a foot of ground — the bee's a 
mile. Yet, though the snail has a separate house over his 
head, and the bee has but a chamber in a boarding-house, 
I should estimate their probable respective dignity by the 
difference between a foot and a mile. And this conscious 
orbit seems to be only the distance that one travels over 
with the means of locomotion that are incorporated in his 



THE HORSE, UNDER A NEW ASPECT. 183 

personal idejitlty ; not what one does with adventitious aid 
— the fly iu a rail-car, we suppose, having no more 
respect for himself than a fly in a kitchen. A habit of 
riding in a carriage is thus a short-coming, as to its 
power to enlarge the conscious dignity. 

But a horse may be added to a man. With daily 
habituation to the saddle, the animal becomes as natu- 
rally a function of the system, as the wings become part 
of the consciousness of the worm, on its changing into a 
butterfly. Henry Ward Beecher says, in one of his 
clever letters to the Independent, that "the horse is a 
gentleman " — and so he is ; for the art of a gentleman is, 
to blend his presence, insensibly and deferentially, into 
the presence of another. As you get used to his paces, 
and he to your wishes and motion, the horse's four legs 
and better wind grow into the consciousness of your own 
two legs and lungs. You take him into your general 
sense of existence and power, dismissing him from particu- 
lar remembrance like a hand or a foot. There is a facile 
naturalness about this which seems either like a memory 
revived, or a prescient instinct. {Have we been quadru- 
peds ? Or shall we be centaurs ?) 

By the summer's temperature and by its demands upon 
social locomotion, the use of the saddle is more or less dis- 
placed. With friends and children to see scenery and 
take the air, heat to avoid, and working-man wanted in the 



1 84 I. K T T K n S F K <) M 1 D I. 10 WILD. 

pjiinlcn, one plnys diivcM' every day, doinp^ what travel is 
nLcreeahle on wheels. A I( lioiiii'li more exlenl, is llms passed 
over, ]»erli:ips, it is as ji ])nsseii<j^er eonvoyiMl, not, as a 
Rin<^le ereuliire iiiovin;;' l>y the e\ereis(> of its iiiieouseious 
will aiitl liiiihs. And this ( t lie experieneo which \ wish to 
record) is a lessoning of the persoiiid orl>il, a I'ednciiii:; of 
the iiidividiinl mid preron;at.ive ()eeui)aney of the earth's 
surlaeo, to tiie extcid of what one walks over on foot. 

I>iit, the ('((iiiiiox -which takes the laMLi:iior out of tlu^ 
jiir, and which drives friends and visitors to the city and 
makes eliildi-en prcfei' (^xcrcisci to a. (h'ive — jj^ivcs back tin? 
Iive-niile dianu'ter to niy difj^nity. There is a horso i)owcr 
in my consciousness — for I daily move whore 1 list, with 
u horse nnder me. And oh, i\\r jiroporfloii therc^ is in it ! 
Tree's are t()o tall, monntains loo fai^apart, streams too 
loniV ii> lln'ir courses, and winds too chilling and too wild 
in their wanderinji^s — for man without a horse. AVe are 
ampnialed, without one, when ahroad with nature. The 
instinct, auu)u,u; mountains and valleys, is that, all around 
was measured for horse-reach — " upon thy lielly shult 
thou jj,()," ex|)ressin«;' the fati^^ue and elVort that con- 
stituted the serpent's dej!;rada,t ion from his lirst allotment, 
coidinini!,- him to a small s[)ace by incapacitatinpj him from 
the use of the saddle. lUrds can walk after their winj^^s 
are clipped, and nuMi can live without horses in cities — 
but both are mutilated. 



A N () n O I) Y - H AT II . 185 

It will 1)0 imdcrslood (luit (his ciijargiuy" of (.lij^nity as 
a huiimn hoinu;, hy a daily rido on liorscback, is not an 
iniTCMise of concoit as (o ono's relative consequcni'c uinoiiL:; 
nci<2^hl)ors. On tin? contrary (unless a man is riding- a 
thousand dollar horse, whilo niino, uj)on which 1 l)nild this 
theory, cost lifty), one wholesomely gets away from his 
own fences and his nndispnled dictatorship over i)it;s and 
chickens — wholesomely airs his other-i)eo|)le-net;s — by 
going upon thai which he forgets as an udvantagc. In a 
carriage, he takes with him his |)rocIaimer of something 
from wiiieii others can be excluded. JJut, on a horse which 
liabit has made a part of his identity, he feels abroad — 
the wayfarer that he looks to be — unstarched of j)rivi- 
Icges and open to chance; companionship ; and this is a 
'Hobodjf-bath, of which those who live in great cities get 
more than is liealthful or i)leasant, and those who breathe 
only tlio atmosphere of their own estates get too little. 

J5ut I have spun philosophy willi a, pen mended to 
note tbo season and its l)ringings-al)onl. Oclohcr to- 
morrow, and not a leaf changed at Idlewild ! ^'et, three 
weeks ago, refreshing my memory with a drive about 
the Kdcn-subur])s of Boston, I found every maple, between 
lloxbury and Alillon, crimson wi(h the red-letter chroni- 
cle of a frost. Have we so much more summer, on oar 
Highland Terrace ? The Autumn haze and stillness are 
liere, slumbering over the l)right greeu woods, like the 



186 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

brief tranquillity of a first revolt from the world, thrown 
sometimes over the face of a beauty of sixteen. The 
brooks are oh, how brilUant, in their autumnal fulness ! 
Idlewild's cascades have strengthened to an anthem. 
The two inner door-posts of the State — the two moun- 
tains between which the Hudson passes out to the sea — 
are curtained with June's drapery of emerald. Yet this 
lingering Summer was brought us by an early Spring. 



N A T r U E ' S MUSIC. 18T 



LETTER XXIX. 

October's First Sunday— Silverbrook, and the Blacksmith's Story of its History 
—Storm-King and Black Peter— EflFects of the Avalanche — Tribute to Child- 
ren's Love, Ac, 4c. 

October 15, 1858. 

October's first Sunday seemed to be a celebration of 
High Mass out of doors. Our mountain-galleried temple 
with its ten-mile floor, was decorated by the first frost ; 
and the three glens which traverse it were like three 
aisles cai-peted witli rainbows. Stillness, brightness, 
purity and all, it seemed to me I had never seen a morn- 
ing with more Sabbath in it. By common consent, the 
winds seemed excluded from these open-air services. It 
is only when they are hushed that nature seems devout. 
But the streams played their varying chant — Idlewild 
(perhaps because a new-born daughter of mine was 
cradled among its leaves) the loudest voluntary of all. 
The Moodna, descending more gradually to the Hudson, 
is the hasso of this Highland choir ; and Silverbrook, on 
the other side of our own wildest and most precipitous 
torrent of all, is the slender-voiced and less constant so- 
prano. I listened to each in turn, with slacked bridle, on 



188 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

Sunday morning. If there was any other sound in the 
wide world, it was no interruption to the hymning trio ; 
and the vibrations of their music, amid the light incense 
of the sunshine and leaves, seemed to have meaning with- 
out words — a worship of God inarticulate but eloquent. 
My morning ride was to the knee of old Storm- King* 
I had not yet seen the piling-up of rocks in his lap by the 
avalanche of a month or more ago — a neglected pilgrim- 
age, considering the magnitude of the phenomenon to 
our quiet neighborhood. The stream I crossed (and the 
thickly cottaged-valley of which was the main scene of 
destruction by the freshet so memorable) was long and 
patiently mined for silver by the first settlers — Silver- 
brook being thereby made its history and its name. I 
sat on the village anvil, the other day, while a loose shoe 
was fastened for my mare, and listened to a love-story 
which the blacksmith tells of those early days — the vic- 
tim, a daughter of the chief who had given the white 
man shelter while he delved for ore. It was capitally 

* The tallest mountain, with its feet in the Hudson at the Highland Gap, is 
officially the Storm-King— being looked to, by the whole country around, as the 
most sure foreteller of a storm. When the white cloud-beard descends 
upon his breast in the morning (as if with a nod forward of his majestic head), 
there is sure to be a rain-storm before night. Standing aloft among the 
other mountains of the chain, this sign is peculiar to him. He seems the mon- 
arch, and this seems his stately ordering of a change in the weather. Should 
not Storm-King, then, be his proper title ? 



BLACK PETER, 189 

told, and I would re-tell it if I could ; but it needs the 
click of the hammer for emphasis, and tlio look up from 
under the smooched hat for pathos, with here and there 
the parenthesis of a " whoa !" to my kicking mare. The 
Indian vengeance, by the way, was only calm scorn and 
a leading to the door of the wigwam with expressive 
pointing of the finger to the distance — the daughter re- 
tained and cherished, and the seducer driven forth with 
contempt. It was a traditionary lesson of pity and dig- 
nity, worthy of seal and vellum, though told by the his- 
torian over a leather apron and with a horse's leg in his 
lap. 

Tiic road along the Storm-King's lap — half-a-mile or 
thereabouts of Highland level — turns off from the turn- 
pike between Canterbury and Cornwall, and is as lovely a 
walk or drive, views and ])ackground together, as the 
world has to show. As a mountain shelf, overhang-in jr 
the broad bowl of the Highland Bay, it will be jotted 
with the villas of the lovers of scenery, as soon as the 
railroad on this side of the river shall bring us within 
suburban distance of New York ; but, at present, it is a 
secluded green lane, kept in fine travelling order by the 
liberal farmers who live upon it, and ending at the cot- 
tage of Black Peter, whom I found sitting at the door 
and coaxing his rheumatism in the sun. From my saddle 
I could see down upon the decks of the sloops becalmed 



190 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD 

in the Bay, and almost seemed near enough to count the 
passengers in the cars on the raih'oad opposite. Busy 
life was very near. Wild fastnesses of rock were very 
close behind. For villa-ground of combined picturesque- 
ness and liveliness of surroundings, I know no spot of 
greater capability. As the birth-place and burial-place 
of our country's young hero, Duncan, it is a neghborhood 
enriched, besides, with a sentiment and a memory — a spot 
of earth with a soul. 

But Black Peter, at whose cottage I had dismounted, 
is next neighbor to the avalanche, the cataract of rocks 
having descended a few rods beyond his chimney-smoke ; 
and, after prescribing for his lame leg, I walked on to 
take a closer look at the bared ribs of the Storm-King. 
I was suqirised to see that the multitude of enormous 
rocks, which had come down with the burst of the water- 
spout upon the summit of the mountain, had nowhere 
accumulated with sufficient strength to check the head- 
way of the flood. The vast fragments, many of them 
ei^ht or ten feet square, were tossed out of its way to 
the sides of the torrent, leaving a hollow gulf cut quite 
through the terrace, or lap of the mountain, and forming 
what will be, hereafter, a rock-walled channel for the 
melting snows. It gave me quite a new idea of the power 
of the element that flows so gently in the brook. Those 
who, from ten miles around, see the scarred seam down 



CniLD-LOVE. 191 

the breast of the Storm-King, cau hardly conceive the 
resistless ploughing up of ribs of rock by the cataract 
that did it. Geology might well illustrate a lesson 
there. 

But next neighbor to the Storm-King with his avalanche 
— poor old Black Peter with his rheumatism — is quite 
as noteworthy ; and, indeed, after stopping to exchange 
another word with him on my return, I found more of my 
Sunday's sermon in the cripple — (the old man mused 
upon, and the mountain forgotten) — as I rode leisurely 
homeward. There is one thing said of Peter by every- 
body : — ^^ It is xooiiderfibl how tJie cJdldrai always loved 
himP His time-worn face tells the reason of it — broad- 
featured, simple, kindly, and cheerful. lie has passed his 
life as gardener and working-man for the different wealthy 
families hereabouts, and many a gentleman and lady, now 
moving gaily in city life, has been made happy by dand- 
ling on his knee ; but, for the last few years, quite disa- 
bled, he has lived, in the small hut up against the moun- 
tain, supported by the charity of neighbors, or hobbling 
down to the turnpike on his crutch, to " show his paper" 
to the passer-by. It is curious how singly and universally 
his character for making children fond of him is estab- 
lished. " Yes," said an old gentleman, to whom I spoke 
of him yesterday, ''the boys and girls would leave the 
luxuries of the parlor table untouched, to go out and eat 



192 



LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD 



salt pork and bread with Peter, any time !" And he is 
made famous, at last, by this long life of child-love. Xo- 
body speaks of him without naming it. Though not par- 
ticularly cherished or petted by the neighborhood, he has 
a better specialty than most of us — a loveable specialty, 
which makes him an example, while it provides that ho 
shall be remembered. lie must always have been genial, 
truthful, self-sacrificing, and considerate — always both 
playful and judicious. His character is written in the 
tribute it brought — letter loved than anybody by the child- 
ren. Many a costly marble monument can say less of 
the man beneath it. 






CNAtlk.NuWLEDGED SERVICES. 193 



LETTER XXX. 

Working for Neighbors— Answers of Inquiries as to the price of Land, 
Farms, Ac— " Harriet's" Letter— Apples Promiscuous on Barn-floor— Ac- 
count of Society around us, Ac, &c. 

October 22, 1858. 

My nciglibors, who ride past, look upon Idlewild as the 
napkin in which a talent is buried — a place where a man 
lives who never plants a potato. To the annual estimate 
of the produce of Orange County I do not add pig or 
pea. Yet I find myself doing a great deal of work of 
which my neighbors are not aware — and for which, of 
course, they can give me no credit, though it may quad- 
ruple exclusively their own pigs and peas. I do, at least, 
the work of one public secretary, in answering letters of 
inquiry about the desirableness of the neighborhood — the 
price of land, the nature of the soil, access to markets, 
communication with the city, churches, water, public 
spirit, roads, taxes, butchers, bakers, and Sunday schools. 
Of the fifty thousand readers of the Ilomt Journal, to 
whom I have the privilege of mentioning Idlewild and its 
neighborhood once a week, many, of course, arc on the 

9 



194 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

point of yielding' to the new movement — business in the 
city, borne in the country — and, of the locality whose 
comfort and lovehness I thus indirectly advertise, they 
naturally feel a curiosity to know more. A private letter 
addressed to me is the simplest way of coming at it, 
though occasionally I have a visit from an inquirer in per- 
son. To these letters I have endeavored to perfonn the 
duty of a good citizen, truthfully furnishing what infor- 
piation I could pick up, and at the same time throwing 
an encouraging light on the interests of the vicinity. In 
here and there an instance, the writer has been of the 
wealthier class, in search of a villa-site rather than a farm ; 
and feeling that my daily explorings of the scenery had 
chanced to make me a good reference on this point, I have 
freely offered myself as guide to such secluded Tempe, or 
fine point of view, as the purchaser might describe to me 
for his ideal. To the ten or twelve lovely caprices of 
nature, which I have found hidden away for Paradises in 
these romantic Highlands, I trust, in a year or two, to 
have guided tasteful appreciators and possessors. 

But, to some of these letters of inquiry I am called 
upon to reply in print — the writer not giving name or 
address — and occasionally I have done so, by alluding to 
the subject indirectly, and thereby, perhaps, supplying in- 
formation to others who might be curious on the same 
point. One lies before me at this moment from a me- 



SOIL ADAPTED TO FRUITS, ETC. 195 

cbanic who has lost his healtli m the city, and who wishes 
to change his vocation to market-gardeniug ; the great 
rise in the price of fruits and vegetables promising him a 
better return for his labor, while the nature of the em- 
ployment will be better for his health. To his three or 
four queries I will reply briefly here. The best possible 
hind for frnits and vegetables may be bought hereabouts 
for, from eighty to a hundred dollars an acre. Freight- 
steamers leave the dock, near-by, every night, arriving at 
a city pier on the North River before morning, thus giv- 
ing the produce of this neighborhood a cheaper and more 
convenient access to New- York than from gardens on 
Long Island, where wagons must be used for some dis- 
tance, and where one hundred dollars rent is sometimes 
paid for the acre. Commission-agents, who take charge 
of the produce and dispose of it, go in each freight-boat. 
The sales from one market farm of twenty acres, which 
adjoins Idlewild, have exceeded two thousand dollars in 
the season just closing, and the proprietor works his own 
grounds with the assistance of one man. The soil is par- 
ticularly favorable to the growth of grapes, now the most 
profitable produce of the country as well as the easiest of 
cultivation. 

I have another letter, however, to which I find the an- 
swer more difficult. It is from the wife of one of our 
subscribers whose household gods are turning their faces 



196 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

this way — but, while he would probably have iuquired 
into the soil and products, sJic (playiug scribe) asks for 
particular information with regard to the society of the 
neighborhood. Perhaps I had better give her letter as 
it stands : — 

" New York, . 

" Dear Sir, — 

" I read with pleasure of your pursuits and pleasures at Idle- 
wild, and the glorious country round about you. How I long to 
get free from this dusty, suffocating city, and its money-loving in- 
habitants, to roam about among the sunny hills and shady valleys 
of the beautiful body-and-soul-reviving country. 

" My dear William and I. how hard we have worked ! how fru- 
gally we have lived ! We have denied ourselves every luxury, 
that we might the sooner accumulate the means that will enable 
us to buy the much-coveted farm, and leave behind all the cares 
of this busy life, and spend the remainder of our days amid the 
beauties of some country home. 

" But, sir, there is one thing that gives me much uneasiness, and 
I shall consider it a great favor if you will be kind enough to put 
me right. You frequently write about the city folks that visit 
your place, and speak as if they were all that ever enter your 
grounds ; and you mention that fine old man on the bridge (who 
in the nature of things must soon pass away). Now, sir, when the 
long-wished-for day shall come for us to gain our country home — 
humble it must, of a necessity be — what society must we look for? 
Are the farmers, mechanics, and laboring men, mere boors ? Are 
they really and truly only the bone and muscle of the country ? 
Are there no men and women with hard hands, but soft and loving 



PERTINENT QUERIES. 191 

hearts, whom my cbiklron, from instinct, will climb upo.i, who will 
put their hard toil-worn bauds upon their little heads, and press 
their sunburnt faces to their rosy cheeks, and say, ' God bless 
them?' Arc there no spirits there pregnant with celestial fire 
— hands that the rod of empires might have swayed, or woke to 
ecstasy the living lyre ? Arc countrymen so dull, arc their minds 
60 narrow, that they take no interest in the glorious landscape, 
the glowing sunset, the bubbling brook, the roaring cataract, or 
the singing of the countless birds ? Are there none of these that 
dear William and I can take by the hand, and go out beneath the 
quiet stars and talk of the beauty of nature, and the goodness of 
Him who made this world so lovely ? 

*' My dear, sir, tell me the whole truth about this matter, that we 
may know what we must expect ; for you know we must have some 
one with whom we can hold sweet converse. TVe do not expect to 
meet educated poets or painters among the hard-working people 
of the country, but we want some who have the souls of such 
within them, whom we can call by the sacred name of friend. 

" If such as these cannot be found — if such noble souls do not 
exist, apart from the polished circles of city life, tell me plainly 
and truly. If there are none such as I have pictured, then fare- 
well, a sad farewell, to my long-cherished hopes of spending the 
remainder of my days in some quiet home, endeared to me by the 
love of such noble, generous hearts as I have here described. 

" Dear sir, I remain your constant and admiring reader, 

" Harriet." 

I am embarrassed with having only this letter to reply 
to, dear Mrs. " Harriet." Without seeing you, and 
knowing something of your stage of womanhood and 



198 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

your experience of life, I can scarcely clioose with safety 
between describing our " society " as profbundly stupid, 
or most varied and agreeable. There are those to whom 
it might be either. I, myself, find it the latter — but 
then I have got through with my crli5^expcrience of life, 
and like people neither more nor less for the house they 
live in or the clothes they wear. Charming women are 
everywhere — some smothered under their husbands' good 
dinners, or shelved away in bank-stock and splendid car- 
riages, some unthought-of in dairies or forgotten behind 
wash-tubs and single blessedness. Nature's noblemen 
are everywhere — in town and out of town, gloved and 
rough-handed, rich and poor. Prejudice against a lord 
because he is a lord, is losing the chance, of finding a good 
fellow, as much as prejudice against a ploughman because 
he is a ploughman. Are you ready, dear Mrs. " Har- 
riet," to take a second look, after reading the outside 
label upon a man or a woman, and to confirm it, or not, 
according to God's mark, which will show itself some- 
where? If so, the society of Highland Terrace will 
be delightful to you. But let me illustrate it by some- 
thing I found to eat, yesterday, in one of my rides. 

Wiled along by the wilderness of unbent rainbows and 
the swoon of passionate stillness in the Autumn noon, I 
had got farther from home than my breakfast had pro- 
vided for — seven or eight miles of lovely road, but my 



AN IXViTIXG SJICHT. 199 

dinner at the other end of it. The trot of my high-step- 
ping mare reminded me of my aching void — in fact, 
I felt, like Mrs. " ECarriet," that "there must be some one 
with whom I could hold sweet converse,'- if they had 
anything in the world that I could eat. At this crisis I 
noticed a large barn, with the doors standing Invitingly 
open, and the floor covered with apples ! *' Manna in the 
wilderness " was my first thought ; but, Avith the second, 
I remembered a stomach rather over-delicate with cosset 
ing and nursing ; and then came a third thought (which 
I wish to recommend to Mrs. ''Harriet's" notice), that, 
possibly, this might not be hog-feed altogether — possibly 
not all cider-apples and colic — better have a look, at 
least, before turning hungry away. 

I dismounted, and tied my mare to the snake-fence. 
The barn was just over the bars. I introduced myself to 
the promiscuous society of the apples. But, thank God, 
what a mistake I had escaped making 1 Here was every 
kind of apple that grows — the multitude of a most varied 
orchard mellowing unselected in the sun. There was 
Pearmain and Pippin, Greening and Lady Apple, oblong 
Spitzeu])urg and rosy Maiden's-blush — there was golden 
Russet and juicy Seek-no-further, sturdy Baldwin and 
handsome Tewksbury. Tumbled together on the rough 
floor they certainly were ; but, with a close look and a 
press of the thumb, you might find, in every dozen, one 



200 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

apple, at least, well worthy of slicing with a silver knife. 
The country^s best stock and quality were there — only 
they were not barrelled. Why, the pippin I ate — a juicy 
satisfier, picked from a clump of cider-apples and tardy 
russets — might have been the tempter on a fruiterer's 
show-basket. Xow, Mrs. " Harriet," would you have 
been capable of satisfying your hunger on this barn- 
floor ; or must you have waited till the apples were sort- 
ed, barrelled, and offered at a city price ? Because 
apples and society are very much alike. 

Without exactly making out a census of the agreeable 
peoj)le in our neighborhood, I may, however, be a little 
more explicit in my ve-plj to Mrs. " Harriet's" query. 
WiChin four or five miles of Idlewild, I believe there are 
most sorts of people. Fifteen or twenty " old families " 
still live very conservatively on their estates, within call- 
ing distance, and are as learned on game dinners and 
Madeiras as any "William" could desire. Of wealthy 
manufacturers, brick-makers and millers, we have a dozen 
or more — smarter men not to be found. Quaker farmers, 
in easy circumstances — plain but genial folks with well- 
educated families — are sprinkled thickly over this end of 
the country. Of clergymen, lawyers, and schoolmasters, 
we have, I am sure, an unusually superior befalling, for a 
country neighborhood. We have several unanimous 
belles, and several others who would be beautiful to 



OUR NEIGHBORS. 201 

Raphael's eje or Titian's, but whose unfulfilmciit of des- 
tiny, lilie a sun's dial in a grave, happily keeps them cold 
also. Then, this side of Snake Hill, 4vc have a cele- 
brated prose author (Headley), in a beautiful villa — a 
successful architect (Yaux), building charming houses — 
and a poet (Clarence Cooke), in his cottage of " The 
Roses." There is an anonymous authoress or so, to 
whom I must thus anonymously refer. And, after thus 
showing what might be "picked for barrelling" from our 
society orchard, I might name intimates of my own, 
among the working men and the children that come 
to Idlewild for chestnuts. But I will save this last enu- 
meration till Mrs. " Harriet" comes herself. We will 
then take a look together at the barn-floor. 



9* 



202 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER XXXI. 

Autumn Splendors — Road Tax and amateur Road Making— Society for Volunteer 
Raking — Difference of Roads and Neighborhoods — North and South of Idle- 
wild, &c., &c. 

October 29, 1853. 

Sunrise — but what a scene out of my window I Has 
our " fast world " overtaken a sunset ; or has a sunset 
overslept itself and been surprised among its blushing 
blankets by a frost-shod morning ? Really, what I see 
is almost unnaturally beautiful. Idlewild glen looks like 
a " rosy West/' through which one may walk like a 
garden. To the sickening to-morrow-ishness of life-hopes 
but a little out of reach, birds that will 7iot quite wait to 
have the salt put upon their tails, and glowing sunsets 
always just over an horizon, twenty or thirty miles 
farther on — there seems, at last, to be an exception. 
Here are the crimson and gold, the scarlet and purple 
of a sunset — close-to — touchable — pluckable — and in no 
hurry to fade away — tree-clouds, of every color in the 
rainbow and of boundless prodigality of beauty, slumber- 
ing immovably around us. Who will come and be 



ROAD MAKING. 203 

astonished ? We are somebody's horizon, of coarse, as 
somebody is ours. Storm-King mountain is the West, 
from somewhere, and Idlewild (on its other side) is just 
over the border-line betwixt land and sky — the elusive 
beyovd, into which have dropped all the sunsets of a 
Summer. I think, if they (whose West we are) would 
but step this way, and look over the horizon, now, they 
would think we had contrived to detain a " dying day " 
or two I Come, my dear General I You, who, at 
UnderclifF, are the other epaulette of West Point, and 
the two of you being my next neighbors East — come and 
see us with your military eyes I The glen will look to 
you like an encampment of sunsets on a halt. And then 
take one look, as a poet, and sigh over such a hcaped-up 
wilderness of to-days showing brightest when passing into 
to-morrows. 

Harvest in, and weather cool, our neighbors arc work- 
ing out their road-tax — most of them preferring to pay it 
in labor, though the wages of a working-man are now ten 
shillings a day, and the law makes the payment of Jive 
shillings a day an equivalent for the tax. It is a very 
fair exponent of what kind of a " day's-work" is usually 
given to that unpopular master, "The Public.'' If they 
would halve it once more, however, it would be a public 
advantage, I think — going over half as much ground, and 



204 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

not hauling half as many loose stones upon the track. A 
pick-axe, too, which would remove the stumbling-stones 
from the old road, and level the ruts, would do better 
service than the plough and drag, which only cover a bad 
old road with a worse new one — but then a pick-axe is the 
Paddy-tool, for which the brain, at the upper end of the 
Yankee's spine, seems to disturb, somehow, the equili- 
brium which keeps up the willingness of the elbow ; and, 
if the farmer brings team and plough, it reckons as a man- 
and-a-half extra. So there are more ploughs than pick- 
axes, and the roads are "mended" by ripping open and 
heaping up — the " charming drive " of the Summer being 
thus converted into a prolonged potato-patch. 

Aniateur road-making is a small-pox, of which the 
remedy (a vaccination-tax, to pay an engineer for much 
less labor judiciously applied) will, of course, make its 
way very slowly ; but, if it were not so unpopular to pre- 
scribe for any public epidemic, I should like to suggest an 
alleviative, meantune, and set the example by first apply- 
ing it myself. An hour or two of labor with an iron rake, 
after the path-master has finished his job, would remove 
the loose stones from almost any half-mile of the soft dirt 
he leaves in heaps, and vastly facilitate, and better its 
packing and hardening. This, repeated once a month 
throughout the year, would be a gain to the country at 
large, if it were only in wheel-wear and stumble-damage ; 



MAKING AN EXAMPLE OF A RAKE. 205 

but those who arc pious and have land to sell along the 
river, should be reminded also of the greater tendency to 
profane language on stony roads, and of the air of discom- 
fort which " rough going " gives to the neighborhood, in 
the eyes of visitors who might otherwise fancy the scenery 
and " buy lots." A modest citizen would not venture to 
be the founder of a Society, of course, without the 
urgency of some grand moral and utilitarian improve- 
ment ; but, with the two objects of piety and profit just 
named, I think I might safely propose to the inhabitants 
of Highland Terrace, the formation of a Society for 
Voluntary Raking — every member agreeing, in addition 
to his road-tax, to keep the highway clear of loose stones 
in front of his own walls and fences. My own road-tax 
(twenty-one days) I have preferred to settle by the pecu- 
niary substitution, being handier at a pen than a pick-axe ; 
but the " voluntary raking" I will do, in my own proper 

person, commencing to-morrow morning, October . 

After that date, I promise my brother-farmers the 
example of a diligent rake along the fences of Idlewild, 
trusting to their prompt approval and co-operation. 

The junction of the Moodna with the Hudson (close to 
the river-gate of Idlewild) divides two neighborhoods 
which are in very different stages of advancement, as to 
excellence of roads. From the north side of the Moodna 
to Newburgh, four miles, it is as smooth wheeling as in 



206 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

the Hyde Park of London ; while, from the south side, ia 
any direction, it is as rough as public spirit exercised 
upon amateur road-mending could well make it. The dif- 
ference is owing partly to the longer settlement of the 
Newburgh side, and to its being the river-road, along the 
estates of wealthy proprietors ; but it is owing still more 
to the liberality and enterprise of an individual — the 
munificent " Commodore," so well known on the Hudson, 
having long held the office of '' path-master." At the 
toll-bridge over the Moodna, the highway leaves the 
river, and enters upon a track of smaller farms and 
wilder scenery ; and worse roads, with this change, are 
both natural and excusable. Close as they are to each 
other, the two neighborhoods are probably half a century 
apart in their notions of " what will answer " for a road 
An idea of the standard, on our side, may be gathered 
from a reply made to me, not long ago. I had engaged 
one of my neighbors to furnish me with eight or ten 
heavy sticks of timber, for the construction of a couple 
of bridges across Idlewild brook. They were to be 
** snaked down right away." Three or four weeks passed 
without my seeing anything of them, however, and I was 
about calling on my friend to enquire why, when a wood- 
chopper, with his axe on his shoulder, passed me on the 
road, just at sundown. " I have been cutting down your 
sticks," said he, as we exchanged a nod at meeting. 



A ROAD WITH A " SHORT CUT." 207 

" Ah, then, I may look for them to-morrow ?" I replied, 
somewhat pleased at the prospect of soon having my 
bridges passable. " Why, no I" he said, feeling of his 
chin, with a thoughtful estimate of the diflQculties ; " not 
so soon as that, quite. You see they arc a mile or two 
back in the woods, and there's a mile of road to cut, before 
we can snake 'em out. But you'll have 'em next week, I 
guess." And the "mile of road" was cut, and the 
timbers duly made their appearance, five days after- 
wards. 



208 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD 



LETTER XXXII. 

Discovery of an Iron Mine in the Neighborhood — Lack of National Quickness at 
Beautifying Scenery — Poem on the Flood-ravages at Idlewild — Drawing and 
Landscape-Gardening, Ac, &c. 

November 5, 1S53. 

We have an addition to the moving scenery of our 
neighborhood, in processions of broad-wheeled, four-horse 
wagons, laden with iron ore, a recently discovered pro- 
duct of the valley of the Moodna. The newly opened mine 
is a remarkably rich one, about two miles back from the 
Hudson, and the enormous wagons with their fine horses, 
and other signs of the lavish enterprise with which it is 
worked, give quite a stir to the highway, usually so quiet 
after the departure of summer boarders. The scientific 
miners, whose divining-rod has made such a true dip, tell 
us that there is coal under the bed of our own romantic 
brook. I find its most picturesque gorge was once sold 
for a slate-quarry, too. And, between these alarms, and 
a bank or two of such clay as they make bricks of, 
and the expression of surprise, by now and then an engi- 
neering visiter, at the " beautiful water privileges" we 



THE NYMPH OF IDLEWILD. 209 

throw away (in two hundred feet of descent of brook be- 
tween our u})pcr fence and the Hudson), I am in daily 
terror of finding our lovely uselessncss grown valuable. 
The nymph of Idlewild, the Egeria of our secluded brook, 
might, of course, be too saleable to keep ; and I feel like 
the peasant mother of Italy — when her daughter is ripen- 
ing into womanhood, too beautiful not to be a high-priced 
model for the sculptors and painters — in dread of the 
hour when home could no longer afford to keep her 
sacred. 

But our lovely nymph, so in peril, is not likely to pass 
into a utility, unlamentcd or unsung. There are those 
who watch her with the inspired eye of tenderness and 
poetry. A poem is beside me — one I had no thought of 
publishing, till this chance turn of a thought made it so 
fitting as to be excusably given to the public — suggested 
by my record of the ravages of the beauty of our valley 
by the recent avalanche and freshet. It comes anony- 
mously, but the hand is a lady's. I shall look to her for 
a monody over our beloved Egeria, should her sacred 
veil of privacy and beauty be rent from her by hard-fisted 
utility. But thus runs her sweet poem, written to be 
read at Idlewild only : — 



210 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

THE FLOOD AT IDLEWILD. 

A torrent swept on in its foaming wrath, 
And destruction marked its stormy path ; 
It deluged the valley, it washed the steep, 
Then scaled its sides with a mighty leap ; 
And we saw the tall trees sway and cower, 
As it hurried on with remorseless power. 

There lay in its path a spot so fair, 
It seemed no evil should enter there : 
For, to it, unnumbered hearts were bound, 
And winged thoughts were hovering round, 
And, at the touch of a poet, smiled 
The woods and dells of Idlewild. 

But what cared the flood, as it thundered on. 
That a thousand nameless charms were gone, 
Wliich the kindling eye of the bard had traced, 
Evoked by his will from the trackless waste. 
It did not pause in its mad career, 
Nor spare the spot to so many dear. 

But on through Idlewild it sped, 
O'erflowing the quiet streamlet's bed. 
And lingering not, though it bore away 
The love and labor of many a day ; 
And on it gazed, with mournful eyes, 
The framer of this Paradise. 



A CURIOUS REFLECTION. 211 

Would ice could choose his lot for him ; 
No cloud should ever his pathway dim, 
But joy's clear sunshine his life illume. 
Untouched or unshadowed by grief or gloom ; 
And his beautiful Idlewild should be 
From the touch of the spoiler ever free. 

But he is afloat on life's stormy sea, 

And chance and change must his portion be, 

And the love that would gladly gild his way, 

Can only look above and pray, — 

God shield him from trial ! — God keep him from wo ! 

And henceforth but with bliss may his path o'crflow! 

A Home Jocrnaust. 

Bnntol, Pa., August 22, 1353. 

I have thought it curious, by the way, that, among the 
many who have strolled with me through our wilderness 
of acclivities and wood-paths — coming upon all kinds of 
views and landscape surprises, and seeing every variety 
of surface, and every possible tangle of wood, rock and 
water — no one has ever yet suggested an embellishment, 
or pointed out a natural beauty that might be modified 
or taken advantage of. Yet the improvements that 
might be made, seem to me as obvious as they are almost 
numberless — charming paths that might be cut, precii)ice3 
and water-falls that might terminate vistas, terraces that 
might be turned into glades and lawns, chasms that might 



212 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

be romantically bridged, and rapids that should be seen 
from eminences. Admiring the little that is done very- 
kindly and warmly, as beautiful, the imagination of a visi- 
ter does not seem to busy itself to lend a thought as to 
what ^nio-ht be done to make it more beautiful still. 
Gmni-creative as the American mind would seem to be, 
the creation of beauty seems not to be among our habitual 
and alert instincts, as a people. I have felt a lack of sym- 
pathy in this, sometimes — not atoned for by the many 
discoveries that arc made of the salable values that lie 
hidden among our paths and woodlands. A highly 
educated gentleman, whose intelligence and good sense I 
very much admire — so handsome a man, too, that he is 
ungrateful to Nature for not being alive to what else she 
has done that is admirable — was walking with me in the 
glen, the other day, and I was showing him a kind of 
rocky parlor at the foot of the rapids, where the springs 
trickle in curtains down the walls, and the floor of stone 
lies half islanded between rapids and still water. Over- 
hung by a crag on the eastern side, it is dark and cool 
from sunrise till nearly noon, and I looked at my friend, 
as his beautiful profile was relieved against the brown 
wet rock, and expected him to jump at once to my 
favourite idea — what a place to turn into a grotto for 
summer breakfasts ! His large hazel eyes fell on point after 
point of the loveliness around him. " Ah 1" said he, 



BEAUTIFYING SCENERY. 213 

''when they come to build that depot. for the Syracuse 
and Hoboken Railroad, this stone will sell, I can tell 
you !" Yet a charming woman was listening, when this 
precipitate was thrown into the romance of the spot. 

Downing's genius was our country's one solitary prom- 
ise of a supply for this lack of common currency — this 
scarcity of beauty coin in our evcry-day pockets. lie 
was the one person who could be sent for — by a gentle- 
man who had purchased land for a country-seat, and who 
had not given up his attention to the development of 
natural beauty — to look at fields and woods, and tell what 
could be made out of them. It takes a hahit of looking 
at such things — at Nature wild in contrast with Nature 
improved — to know how to lay out paths and clump 
woods, plant avenues and inlay brooks among greensward 
and foliage. It takes a poet, perhaps — or, certainly, it 
takes imagination mingled with taste and practical good 
sense — to follow it skilfully as a profession. I am glad 
to know that the poet who was a brother-in-law of Down- 
ing — Clarence Cooke — and who studied under him and 
was much with him, has made it the vocation of his life. 
He is employed at present on one or two estates in the 
neighborhood of Newburgh, and can be addressed, on 
such subjects, at his own cottage of " The Koses," at that 
place. 



214 LET T E R 3 F ii il 1 D L E W I L D , 



LETTER XXXIII. 

Sudden Fall of Leaves — November Haze — Fame of Newspaper-wrappers — Nam- 
ing of a Village — Legend of Moodna, the Indian Chief— Importance of Immor- 
talizing Men and Events by the Naming of Towns, &c., Ac. 

ITovember.p, 1S53. 

!N'ovEMBER the first, and almost every leaf already 
fallen ! The trees seem subject to the same law as we. 
With the extraordhiary vegetation of the wet and warm 
suinQier, they have lived a little too fast, and are paying 
for it by a more early decay. It is an apoplexy of 
Autumn. During a sudden shower which I watched 
from my window, about the middle of October, every 
large drop seemed to strike off a leaf of full vigor. One 
hickory tree, more particularly, was almost wholly 
stripped in an hour — the foliage, too, as it lay upon the 
ground, showing very little of the usual preparatory 
embrowning. It would be disrespectful, of course, to 
blame Nature (though she has cut up several remarkable 
shines, with her weather and water, this A.D. 1853 I) 
but I must venture to mourn over this loss of drapery for 
our Indian summer. And not only for the fullness and 
beauty of the trees (whose trusting and adhering foliage 



fame's tablet. • 215 

usually denies the winter to have come, till long after the 
blowing of the first bitter winds of November), but, for 
tlie actual shade, I mourn as well— here and there a 
noon of December itself being too warm for comfort in 
the sun. There is one curtaining of the landscape still 
left— our forlorn hope for the beauty of this year's Indian 
summer— ^Ae November haze. Even the splintered ribs of 
the old Storm-king look graceful, through that ; and 
those, by the way, who have not seen our Hudson High- 
lands in one of these English atmospheres, should vary 
their lounge at Williams-Stevens-and-Williams's window, 
by a railroad trip hither on the first of those dreamy- 
looking days. Painted landscapes arc but "cold vic- 
tuals" to such pictures as we then have, lying warm 

around us. 

****** 

The newspaper-wrapper is Fame's most enduring 
tablet. No word can die that is once scribbled on 
brown paper as a Post-office direction. And it was with 
a realizing sense of this responsible opportunity to eter- 
nize something or somebody, that I lately found the 
naming of our new-sprung village kindly deferred to me. 
Hidden away in a crook of the stream, the secluded nest 
of factories and cottages in the next valley to Idlewild, 
has thriven hke a swarm of insects in the folds of a rose 
-the beauty of the overlapping hills, and sheltering 



216 • LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

woods, not at all blemished by tlicir teeming industry — 
till at last they have outgrown even the town of whose 
town-ship they were but a distant and nameless part. 
Larger and far more prosperous than Xew Windsor 
('from which they were divided, also, by a stream and a 
toll-bridge, and a long and hilly road J, their erroneous 
direction must still be " Xew Windsor," unless the Post- 
master-General would graciously recognize the village as 
large and separate enough to have a name of its own. 
After a summer of discussion, the petition was drawn up 
and signed by the proprietors and residents, forwarded, 
replied to by a letter of minute inquiry, and finally grant- 
ed some ten days ago. Moodxa, Oratige County, is now 
a note in the Postmaster-General's anthem of ever-swell- 
ing repetition — a hero's name, familiar, hereafter, while 
the world lasts, to Fame and the clerks of the Post- 
oifice. 

The choosing of the name brought up various embar- 
rassing questions. If it had not been an important 
principle that the honor should be rigidly a posthumous 
one, there are two venerable septuagenarians among the 
present inhabitants — models, both, of private lives 
brought to a beautiful completeness — for either of whom 
it would have been acknowledged by the neighborhood to 
be a well-deserved memorial. More practically, still, it 
might record the enterprise and manufactures of the mills 



THE C H R I STE XI XG. 21t 

and factories of tlie place. I bad an unacknowledged 
poetical hankering to call it Lotus-dale, from the pro- 
fusion of water-lilies which open their fragrant cups 
among the ponds and sluices. Then Lafayette had once 
been quartered with his staff, in its prettiest house, and I 
did not see how my friend Lossing, the Historian, would 
excuse me for not commemorating that. But no ! 
There was an earlier claim than any of these. A savage, 
whose wigwam was here — one of those from whom our 
fathers took the soil, and to whose virtues at least we 
owe a memory — had, on this siK)t, set the Christian an 
unsurpassed example. Tradition still told the story, 
though it differed as to his name. Whether the stream 
was called after him, " Moodxa Creek," or whether, as 
some say, Murdner is the word, and the name of the 
English wife for whose life he gave his own,* the heroic 
deed, we thought, would be best commemorated by 
adopting the former supposition, and naming the village 
MooDXA. In that word, now brown-wrapper-ized till 
doomsday, is told the story of an Indian chief, who took 
the death-blow of the tomahawk when his silence only 
would have made the white woman the victim. Children 
will be better started, I think, who are born where 
such nobleness is remembered to have been native to the 
soil — cradled in the home of a great deed. The factory- 

* For this story sec page 39 et seq. 

10 



218 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

bells ring poetry, and iterate a sweet lesson perpetually, 
as Moodna bells. Idlewild, near Moodna, makes Idlewild 
wortli more. It is a privilege to have that bright 
example writ with sweet repetition on the outside of every 
letter that comes to me — better, at least, than " Corn- 
wall," as before, the name of an English haunt of 
begrimed over-toil and starvation. In a country where 
new towns are being named every day, it may not be 
trifling with public attention, perhaps, to ask for a little 
more care over the bestowal of this single-word immor- 
tality, this ever-strengthening brown- wrapper commemo- 
ration and familiar-ization. 



NOVEMBER SUNSHINE. 219 



LETTER XXXIV. 

Mellow Middle in a November day — Ascent to Storm-King — Road from New- 
burg to West Point — Chances for Human Eyries — Difference of Climate be- 
tween the two Mountain-sides — Home-like familiarity of a Uruok, &.C., &c. 

November 19, 1S54. 

The scoop of the rich yellow centre from a slice of nut- 
meg melon, leaving a respectable depth of the colder- 
tinted unripeness at either end, is very like the cut of 
warm and fruity sunshine which lies mellow in the middle 
of a November day — say from ten o'clock till three — and by 
confining oneself to these delicious mouthfuls of noon, the 
summer feast of out-doors need scarce be perceptibly les- 
sened. An artist might reasonably miss the long shadows 
of morning and evening, it is true. But the renewed 
overflowingness and sparkle of the water-courses, at this 
season, redeem any tameness of the landscape ; and, with 
exercise in such elastic sunshine, one looks, somehow, 
through different eyes. What would be glare in summer, 
is joyous illumination now. 

We started after breakfast yesterday (Xov. 5th), to 
ascend to the cloud-piled shoulder of old Storm-King, and 



220 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

look over upon the parade-ground of West Point — the 
young " sodgers" being near neighbors of ours by- 
straight line, though the mountain between is a mile 
or two thick through its un-tunnelled bottom, and divides 
us as effectually as the Appenincs cut off Florence from 
Bologna. "With the work made by the water-spout of a 
few weeks ago, it promised to be something like the cat's 
walk over the house-tops, for any smoothness of road. 
We should properly have been mounted on mules. No- 
thing ever happens to a lady on horseback, however ; and 
my neighbor's daughter, and my own daughter and niece, 
were young travellers enough to rather wish for an adven- 
ture, while my neighbor and I were old travellers enough 
to make the best of one. Besides, we were out for the idle- 
ness of an autumn day. We could let people in Broad- 
way see a month's sight in a morning — we could let elec- 
tricity travel its 300,000 miles a second — and be happy, 
ourselves, for that day, with neither the fashionable indi- 
gestion of event nor the popular distancing of thought 
and observation. 

The principal road across the mountains, from New- 
burgh to West Point, is a fork or two farther west than 
the pass for which we pointed our horses' heads ; and, 
after leaving the Highland level upon which Idlewild 
stands, we had little to follow except the track of the 
woodsman and such gullies as had been ploughed by the 



SUCCESSFUL CULTIVATION. 221 

floods. The ascent of this range is by no means the gra- 
dual acclivity that it looks to be, from below. It is a 
labyrinth of knolls and hollows, over which one travels 
like an ant through a basket of eggs, coming continually 
upon small mountain farms, islanded among irreclaimable 
rocks, and so hidden behind and among them as to seem 
contrived by hermits for inextricable privacy. Oh what 
eyries, for such human eagles as wish to live alone, and 
yet have the world within pouncing reach ! The bright 
springs make miniature meadows, just large enough for 
the rear window of a mountain hut to look out upon, 
and the crags and slopes are the models of walls for 
grasses. Sheep and cows are charmingly at home there — 
fences unnecessary — wood plenty — land eight to ten dol- 
lars the acre — ^West Point music gratis with every South 
wind — and society and other epidemics wholly unknown. 
These attractions prove sufficient for one very cultivated 
man, by the way. lie tried city-life for a while, after 
leaving college, and then expended a small competency in 
a farm on this ridge. After getting his cottage built, he 
sought out a beautiful and poor girl, wholly uneducated, 
married her, and commenced cultivating a virgin mind 
and a virgin farm. Both succeeded to his entire content- 
ment. His wife grew a lady of uncommon dignity and 
intelligence ; and, while they passed their evenings with 
books, their farm and dairy were models by daylight. 



222 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

The story was told me by one of my working neighbors 
who knew them well. 

Somewhere about noon we came upon brooks running 
the other way, and began to smell (we thought) a little 
of the salt air of the seaboard — the ridge we had mount- 
ed being an effectual Panama between this and an inland 
air much more Pacific for the lungs. In the cannon 
of the military post at the foot of the descent on one side 
and the rolls of Orange County butter at the foot of the 
descent on the other, my chronic cough-memory found a 
very correct exponent of the two climates which the 
mountain divides. To my eminent friend Doctor Gray, 
who prescribed the velvet side of this Isthmus so near 
New York (instead of the Trip to the Tropics which I 
took in spite of him, and found so ineffectual), I owe 
what gratitude my present better health is worth ; and I 
mention it here for the benefit of the large public of con- 
sumptive given-over-dom of which I have now ceased to 
be one. To the pulmonary patients who aljound in our 
harsh seaboard atmosphere, this Highland Terrace is a 
far better Malvern than the Antilles — the poor, at least, 
should know. 

Descending through a silence-bound, tree-riven, wilder- 
ness (a place that feels, as you ride through it, like a 
chaos, with an eternity or two still on handj, we came 
suddenly to a breathless little mountain lake, sprinkled 



AN AID TO PATRIOTISM. 223 

with rock islands, and lovely enough for a poem or 
a dream. Its outlet is a water-slide, overhung by a 
romantic crag, and, just now, a flood dashes brilliantly 
down the slanting precipice ; though, in summer, I 
believe, when most resorted to by riding parties from 
West Point and Cozzens's, the cascade is perversely dry. 
Hereabouts terminates the military road commenced by 
the Government as a Simplon between West Point and 
Newburgh ; and into the proposed route of this we now 
struck to return to Idlewild. Our neighbor, who with 
his fair daughter had accompanied us, has a family of 
yeomen sons — manly fellows at the perfection of the first 
American remove from English stock — and the stone 
house of one of them stands not far from the lake, in the 
centre of a mountain farm. The rosy wife soon spread 
an excellent dinner for us. General Washington, who 
often earned an appetite by the same ride (for, it was the 
only road between Fort Putnam and his head-quarters at 
Newburgh), would have felt his patriotism improved, 
many a time, I doubt not, by as good a dinner on the 
same spot. 

Idlewild brook takes its rise hereabouts ; and, as the 
road down the mountain follows its course for three miles, 
till it brings us to our gate (the stream here leaving the 
highway, and plunging into a deep gorge of our own 
grounds, quite hidden from public view) — it was like 



224 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

being accompanied home by a member of the family acci- 
dentally found astray among the hills. How domes- 
ticated a brook gets to be, to be sure ! We praise 
its beauty — we blame its violence — we have a good-bye 
for it when we leave home, and a feeling of how-d'ye-do 
when we see it again — take pride in it when the stranger 
sees its lovehness, and confide to it (when we are alone 
together) many a thought elsewhere untold, many a wild 
dream, many a sadness. For moods which could not" 
bear solitude, the running brook is often company 
enough. It was reasonable in the ancients to recognize 
them as nymphs. They grow to seem conscious and 
friendly, as the motionless rocks never could do. And 
we frequent them, open heart and mind to them, let their 
murmur dispel melancholy, and let them wile away dis- 
content with their music without words — believing in 
them irresistibly, or with the same instmctive and vague 
credence with which we believe it forever to be the same 
brook, though the same water is never seen in it twice. 



S T I C K - A - P I N - T n E R E 



225 



LETTER XXXV. 

Instance of Stick-a-pin-thcrc-Survcy of Premises after a Freshct-IIistory of 
a Dam— Specimen of Yankee Coax-ocracy, &c., &c. 

Noveniber 2G 1853. 

The out-door improvements at Idlewild have here and 
there a marginal note, visible only to myself— a point of 
country knowledge I have learned in the doing of them, 
or a light they have chanced to throw upon the charac- 
ter of neighbors or working-men— and I am tempted to 
ink over one of these viewless memoranda, occasionally, 
for the reading of others besides myself, though it is 
rather ticklish literature on the spot where it is written. 
We are so in the habit of thinking books and newspapers 
to be altogether about distant places and other people, 
that individuals— country-folks particularly— are startled 
to find themselves punctured, even with the " stick-a-pin- 
there " of approval or admiration. 

I went down yesterday, after the abundant freshet 
which has been flooding our brook for the last few days, 
with rather a nervous curiosity to see whether the 
dignity of American aristocracy was vindicated 

10* 



226 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILP. 

whether the dam of my big- pond, that is to say, which 
was built iu defiance of it, and has stood through a year 
of unusual wear and tear, unhumbled and water-tight — 
was still curving its broad lip over the meadow. There 
it flowed, however, a silvery sheet of eighty unbroken 
feet across, and there swam the boat upon the saucy 
brimfulness of the rebellious pond above ; and how and 
why this continued proof that it was a "good job," is 
unpalatable to the predominant nationality of our neigh- 
borhood, I may show by a little history of the building 
of it. 

There was one unsightly spot in the brook — the place 
where it left the rocky gorge, and first spread upon the 
level of the upper meadow, six or eight feet above the 
Hudson. Its descent, here, in the frequent freshets, was 
too violent for the grass to grow, and so, for the greater 
part of the year, we looked down upon an area of bare 
mud and gravel. With rocky precipices and wooded 
slopes forming an amphitheatre around its upper side, the 
opening outward was a hundred feet in width ; and a dam 
across this would turn our eyesore of mud into a beauti- 
ful little lake. It must be done — and, if the advice of 
all my neighbors was to be trusted, there was but one 
" team" that would be likely to make a " good job" of 
it. A. and B. (we will call them for the present) had a 
yoke of oxen that they could handle like a knife and fork, 



THE BARGAIN. 22t 

and drive anywhere— snake any stone into any place — 
could lay a wall like a slice of plum-cake— outwit the 
frost-heave, drift-ice, and flood-wood, and build for the 
least money, the best kind of no-you-don't dam for a 
freshet. The two men took jobs together, but A. was 
rather the "boss," and with him I must make my 
bargam. 

Acquainted as I am with most of the working-men 
hereabouts, I had not chanced to fall in with these parti- 
cular wall-layers ; but I found them at work on a furm 
near the village, and, with some persuasion, engaged them 
to come and look at the ground, that afternoon. They 
came. A. understood at a glance what I had been six 
months studying up, as to handiness of material, risks of 
flood, time, labor, and cost. It would evidently have been 
a waste of words to try to tell him anything about it. 
And, as he sat on a rock and whittled, he was quite too 
smart looking a Yankee to have any chance with in a 
bargain. So I simply proposed that he should do it 
at the usual price of labor by the day — terms cash, com- 
mence on Monday morning, and finish as soon as conve- 
nient. To this entire trust of the matter to the working- 
man's own honesty and industry, there is, of course, no 
objection ; and, leaving A. whittling and B. stoning squir- 
rels, I turned on my heel — enough said, as I supposed, 
but wondering, as I walked up the glen, why my own 



228 LETTERS F R Jr I D L E W I L D . 

prompt readiness, as to terms, had not un-puckered the 
purse- tight lips and eyes of boss A. and his man B. 

Monday came — and another Monday — and the dam- 
builders did not make their appearance. Everybody said, 
*' Oh, you have got to go after them, two or three times, 
before they^ll come I" but not understanding fully what 
this meant, I waited another week. Still, no beginning 
of the job — and it seemed strange that I did not, at 
least, get some message or excuse, as they knew my own 
men were on the ground to take hold and work under 
them, and there was a certain expense to me, of course, 
in the waiting and disappointment. Every day, on the 
way to the post-office, I passed my delinquents laying up 
stone in a neighbor's field ; but as I did not tie my horse 
and get over the fence to speak with them, I, of course, 
had neither renewed promise nor explanation. Contrary 
to the advice of all my practical friends, I gave them up, 
at last, and undertook the building of the dam myself — 
with the aid of my tenant that is to say, who is handy at 
anything, and the three or four Irishmen in my regular 
employ. We built it ; and the neighbors gave us a laugh 
in advance at the way the first freshet would walk through 
it. But the worst one remembered in fifty years has 
gone over it, and the usual half dozen more ; and there 
it stands, to-day, a year old, and apparently as good as 
ever. 



THE EXPLANATION. 229 

Now, if the reader fancies that what I have told, thus 
far, is a very plain story of two men who didn't want a 
job, after looking at it, and merely broke their engage- 
ment as a bungling way of letting it alone, he is mistaken. 
They knew what they were about, and it was of some 
importance to them to get the job, and to perform it well ; 
for, with a newly undertaken property, walls to lay, em- 
bankments to raise, roads to grade, and woods to clear, I 
was the best customer for their particular work, within 
twenty miles. And they were not men who could afford 
to lose character, either for 'cuteness or honesty. They 
have houses, family, stock, and are known to be the 
smartest men, with tools and oxen, anywhere about. But 
there was the pinch ! / was to be made to understand 
and feel that superiority. They were not going to let mc 
— a new-comer with city-fied notions — fancy they could be 
hired and paid off Hke Irish laborers. Oh no ! But how 
to enlighten me ? The price of labor and team, by the 
day, they could not very well alter. Of mere money, they 
could ask no more than the established usage. But 
they could insist on being coaxed to earn it. I could be 
made to know that there were some men who must be 
talked politely to, as well as paid. Did I suppose that 
American citizens, like them, were to be hired with two 
words, like Paddies, and paid off with that darned silence 
that no man ought to stand ? 



230 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

I am defining, not condemning, the coax-ocracy, let me 
add. Having committed no manner of overt offence 
against boss A. and his man B., I am grieved that they 
ohould have stopped speaking to me (as they have) when 
we meet on the road, and that my Paddy-built dam is 
necessarily a disparagement to them, while it continues to 
hold water. Hang the money-only-dom, say I, though 
my dam keeps a stiff upper lip in glorification of it, for 
the present. I am willing to pay tribute, only let us give 
a look, now and then, to see whether the claim is exhor- 
bitant. The working-class feels that it has the power, in 
this country, as the nobility has it in England. But there 
is proper deference, and there is toadyism, to England's 
ARISTOCRACY. Let US talk enough, and not soft-sodder too 
much, to America's coax-ocracy. 



FIXE BOY. 231 



LETTER XXXVI. 

Fine Specimen of a Boy — Young America — Mr. Roe's Boys' School — Surveyinjj 
Class in the Paths of the Ravine, &c., &c. 

December 8, 1868. 

Coming home on a smart trot, yesterday, from a long 
ride in the rain, I was overtaken by one of ray bowing 
acquaintances, a young gentleman of twelve years of age 
whom I frequently meet, mounted on his active little 
pony. As he galloped gallantly alongside, and com- 
menced conversation with the politeness and self-posses- 
sion of a gentleman of forty, I could not help admiring 
the exponent that he was, of the age that is coming after 
us. Cased in India-rubber myself, I was, of course, inde- 
pendent of the mud and rain ; but he, without overcoat, 
and with only his gray school-jacket buttoned tightly to 
his throat, was equally thoughtless of the dirty water 
from the horses' hoofs and the clean water from the 
clouds, and he entered into the discussion of the relative 
merits of our steeds, with a glow on his wet face, and a 
mind entirely at liberty. In the two or three miles that 
we rode together, he accommodated his horse's pace 



232 LETTEPwS FROM IDLEWILD. 

to mine, plirascd his remarks with entire propriety as to 
our respective ages and the fact that we had never before 
exchanged a word, and gave me, altogether, as much 
pleasure as I could have received in the same time from 
any grown-up traveller on the road. Here was boyhood 
doing well, it seemed to me. In health, good manners, 
and proper confidence as to intercourse with those older 
— three important points — Young America is thus doing 
better than it used to do, caricature and ridicule on the 
subject, notwithstanding. 

I have been indebted, also, to some fine boys, for a 
picturesque filling up of the foregrounds of my landscape, 
recently — the handsome groups of a surveying class, 
from the school of my neighbor, Mr. Roe. Our preci- 
pitous and labyrinthine ravine of Idlewild is the best of 
fields for the practice of this out-door science ; and, with 
their tri-colored flags planted on the crags and terraces, 
and their busy movements and lively voices, these healthy 
and happy lads have added much to its charm, of late. 
Youth is beautiful. Its friendship is precious. The 
intercourse with it is a purifying release from the worn 
and stained harness of older life. I rejoice that Idlewild 
is a playground to which the lads of the neighborhood 
can be agreeably made welcome — a wilderness of wood- 
paths and waterfalls, squirrels and chestnuts, boundless 
shade in summer, and a mile or more of dry gravel-walks 



YOUTHFUL SURVEYORS. 233 

ill winter — nothing nice enough for a " trespass," and 
nothing too cultivated to frolic over. But I must show, 
by the way, how the good-will of my young neighbors 
turns to account, after all. They have enriched me with 
a report of their survey — telling me (what I should have 
been long enough in finding out, with all the serpentine 
twistings of the roads and the wildness of the ravine of 
two hundred feet of depth lying between) the distance, 
by air-line, between my gate on the Hudson and the gate 
toward the mountains in the rear. Thus writes the able 
and indefatigable instructor of these practical surveyors 
of from ten to fifteen years of age : — 

* * " The distance from the centre of the one gateway, mid- 
way between the posts, to the centre ditto of the other, is 21,247 
feet (128 rods, and a fraction), bearing N. 12o, 43', 36", E. Any- 
thing further that we can do, within the compass of chain and 
theodolite, that would promote your convenience or amusement, 
will afford me much pleasure, and my boys much valuable exer- 
cise and practice. If they can make their work close, and check 
lines balance, when taken across your ravines and among your 
trees (which I require that they carefully respect), they can do so 
anywhere else. With ycfur permission I shall, through the winter, 
give them other exercises in the ravine. 

" Yours, with much respect, 

" Alfred Cox Roe." 

I have copied my friend's private note and given his 



234 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

name in full, without bis permission, but it is partly to 
answer letters frequently addressed to me for informa- 
tion. The descriptions of the climate and scenery of the 
neighborhood, and the occasional allusion to schools, 
have induced parents among the readers of the Home 
Journal to send inquiries which this name and our fullest 
recommendation of the discipline, instruction, and man- 
ners of the school, may here answer. 



I N T E R E S T I X G TO INVALIDS. 235 



LETTER XXXYII. 

Interesting to Invalids only — Letter from an Invalid Clergyman — Reply — Keep- 
ing Disease in the Minoritj' — Climate of the Tropics — Importance of Attention 
to Trifles, in Convalescence, &c., &c, 

December 10, 1S53. 

Are you quite well, dear reader ? Are all those who 
are dear to you quite well ? If so, perhaps you will 
kindly pass on to another topic, allowing me, under the 
Idlewild caption, for this week, to answer a letter from 
an invalid — the information thus called for being inte- 
resting to invalids only, or to those with precious invalids 
for whom they feel and care. In a world where mortals 
walk beside death with a face averted, the sick can talk 
safely of their sorrows only to the sick. I do uot claim, 
therefore, the attention due to a general topic. Though, 
with pulmonary consumption for our country's most 
fatal liability, any experience, in eluding or defeating it, 
may be of interest to so many, as to be, at least, excus- 
ably tedious to the remainder. It comes appropriately 
from Idlewild. The Highlands around us, I fully believe, 
are the nearest spot to New York, where the acrid irrita- 
tion of our eastern and seaboard climate is unfelt. Poke 



236 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

your fire, then, dear, delicate reader ! (for you arc an 
invalid, by your following me thus far) — and settle your- 
self comfortably in your arm-chair, while I lay 43efore you 
a sad and well-written letter from an invalid : — 

^ (7*****, November 21, 1S53. 

"Mr. Willis. — Dear Sir : — You will perhaps think it pre- 
Bumption in me, an entire stranger, to address yon as I now do ; 
but I shall be willing to abide your judgment after you have 
heard my story. I am a Presbyterian clergyman, in feeble 
health. After five years' preaching in one happy parish, my lungs 
gave out, and I was obliged to give up my calling. By the 
advice of physicians, here and in New York, I spent two winters 
at the South, roaming from place to place, but spending most of 
the time in Jacksonville and St. Augustine, Florida. I was there 
during the winter of your tour in that region, and on the same 
sad errand. And I may here say, that I have taken great pleasure 
in reading, weekly, your record of travel in those parts. 

" But I got no essential benefit from the * Sunny South ' — 
nothing but some disgust for it, weariness of travel, and a warmer 
love for the North and for my home. Neglecting further medical 
advice, I bought, two years since, a pleasant site for a country 
residence in this, my native place, built a house, and devoted 
myself to tree-planting and gardening of all sorts. This has been 
my sole employment for two summers. In winter, I warm my 
whole house, moderately, not allowing the mercury to rise above 
sixty or sixty-two degrees, and connect with this a thorough ven- 
tilation. I remain within doors most of the time. Between romp- 
ing with my two children, playing with grace-sticks, battledoor, 
etc., fighting imaginary foes with my cane, and the music of a 



THE I N \ A L 1 1> (J L E R G Y M A X . 237 

piano, I manage to get regular, daily exercise and recreation. In 
favorable weather, I also take a brisk walk of half a mile. 

" This mode of life makes me quite happy, and I enjoy a toler- 
able degree of health ; but / don't get well. I followed you to 
Idlewild with much interest, having a fellow-feeling on one point, 
at least, and watched to see whether you would get the mastery of 
disease. In your last letter, you say that you are no longer to be 
classed among the consumptives. Alas ! I can't say as much for 
myself, I fear. And on reading your lines, I resolved to write to 
you, as a once fellow-invalid, and ask. What has cured you ? 
The doctors advise me to go South and take cod-liver oil, l)ut 
their prescriptions do me no good ; and I improve most when fol- 
lowing my own judgment. I spade and hoe and rake quite 
lustily, and ride horseback, in summer ; I cough but little, and eat 
and sleep as well as ever — but cannot use my lungs. Now, may 
I trouble you to give me some plain advice — a little of your own 
daily regimen — if you are willing to do so, an account of what has 
helped you ? 

•• I consult you, not as a doctor, but a man of benevolence, 
knowing by experience the feelings of a young man arrested by 
disease, and laid aside from the activities of life. 

" If you do not think proper, nor find it convenient, to address 
me personally, I beg leave to suggest that you give your friends, 
through the Home Journal, some of your views and your expe- 
rience relating to the treatment of pulmonary affections. A large 
and eagerly attentive audience would listen to your words, I 
assure you. 

" Pardon me, sir, if I have annoyed you by this letter ; and if 
you are willing to do so, please allow me to hear from you, and 
greatly oblige, yours, with true respect, a. d. g." 



238 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

[To which straightforward and touching letter, the fol- 
lowing was the bulk of my reply — not very satisfactory, I 
fear, though possibly there may be a point or so, in which 
it is either suggestive or corroborative :] — 

* * The poUticians teach us how to treat a disease, 
I think. They do not try to convert the opposing party. 
They are content if they can hcep it in the minority — sure 
that it will tire, in time, of its want of power, change 
sides, or disappear. The patient wlio troubles himself 
least about his disease (or leaves it entirely to his doctor), 
but who perse veringly 02// 1-0/C5 it by the high condition of 
the other jparts of his system, is the likeliest to recover — 
and it is of this high condition, alone, that I have anything 
to say. Of twenty who may be sleepless with a cough and 
weakened with the raising of blood, no two, perhaps, are 
subjects for precisely the same medical treatment, or 
diseased in precisely the same locality — though all are called 
"consumptives." Our friends, the physicians, are better 
geographers than we, as to where the healing is wanted — 
though they strangely confine themselves to the specific 
ailment, taking it for granted that the patient keeps the 
rest of his body in proper training for recovery. It is medi- 
cal etiquette, I believe, to refrain from any very particu- 
lar inquiry into this. But, few sick men are wise or firm- 
minded enough to be safely trusted with their own general 
condition ; and I, for one, came very near dying — 



THE TROPICS. 239 

not of my disease, but of what my doctors took for 
granted. 

To leave generalities, however, and come to the per- 
sonal experience which you ask for : 

I went to the Tropics, as a last hope to cure a chronic 
cough and blood-raising, whicli had brought me to the 
borders of the grave. I found a climate in which it is 
hard to be unhappy about anything — charming to live at 
all — easy, to die. (At least, those who were sure of 
dying, and did die — and in whose inseparable company 
I thought I was — were social and joyous to the last.) 
The atmosphere of that Eden-latitude, however, is but a 
pain-stilling opiate, while the equator might be called a 
kitchen-range for a Sardanapalus, and the Antilles are 
but tables loaded with luxuries. The Carribbean Sea is 
the Kingdom of the Present Moment. The Past and the 
Future are its Arctic and Antarctic — unthought of 
except by desperate explorers. Hither arc sent inva- 
lids, with weakened resolution, to make a pilgrimage 
with prescription and prudence I You may see by 
the book I have just published ("Health-Trip to the 
Tropics"), with what complete forgetfulness of care or 
caution I made one of an invalid company for 
months. Was anybody going to be shut up in a bed- 
room with such nights out of doors ? "Was anybody 
going to be dull and abstinent with such merry people 



240 LETTERS FROM I D L K W I L D . 

and a Freuch breakfast or tempting dinner on the 
table ? 

I reached home in July, thoroughly prostrated, and, in 
the opinion of one or two physicians, a hopeless case. 
Coughing almost the whole of every night, and raising 
blood as fast as my system could make it, I had no rest 
and no strength. I Ihigered through the summer, and, 
as the autumn came on, and the winter was to be faced, 
I sat down and took a fair look at the probabilities. 
With the details of this troubled council of war, I will 
not detain you ; but, after an unflinching self-examina 
tion, I came to the conclusion that I was myself the care- 
less and indolent neutralizer of the medicines which had 
failed to cure me — that o-ne wrong morsel of food or one 
day's partially neglected exercise might put back a week's 
healing — and that, by slight omissions of attention, occa- 
sional breaking of regimen, and much too effeminate 
habits, I was untrue to the trust which Gray, my friend 
and physician, had made the ground of his prescriptions. 
And, to a minutely persevering change in these compara- 
tive trifles, I owe, I believe, my restoration to health. 
There was not a day of the succeeding winter, however 
cold or wet, in which I did not ride eight or ten miles on 
horseback. With five or six men, I was, for most of the 
remaining hours of the day, out of doors, laboring at the 
roads and clearings of my present home. The cottage of 



AIR AND EXERCISE THE BEST MEDICINE. 241 

Idlewild was then unbuilt, and the neighboring farm- 
house, where we boarded, was, of course, indifferently 
warmed ; but, by suffering no state of the thermometer 
to interrupt the morning cold bath, and the previous fric- 
tion with flesh-brushes, which makes the water as atrrce- 
able as in summer, I soon became comparatively inde- 
pendent of the temperature in doors, as my horse and 
axe made me independent of it when out of doors. With 
proper clothing to resist cold or wet, I found (to my sur- 
prise) that there was no such thing as disagreeable 
weather to be felt in the saddle ; and, when a drive in a 
wagon or carriage would have intolerably irritated my 
cough, I could be all day iu the woods with an axe, my 
lungs as quiet as a child's. 

With all this — and looking like the ruddiest specimen 
of health in the country around about — I am still (^you 
will be comforted to hearj troubled occasionally with my 
sleep-robber of a cough ; and, iu Boston, the other day, 
on breathing that essence of pepper and icicles which 
they call there " East Wind," I was seized with the old 
hemorrhage of the lungs and bled myself weak again. 
But I rallied immediately on returning to this Highland 
air, and am well once more — as well, that is to say, as is 
consistent with desirable nervous susceptibility. The kiss 
of the delicious South Wind of to-day ( November 30), 
would be half lost upon the cheek of perfect health. 

11 



242 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

I fear I cannot sufficiently convey to you my sense of 
the importance of a horse, to an invalid. In my well- 
weighed opinion, ten miles a day in the saddle would cure 
more desperate cases (particularly of consumption), than 
all the changes of climate and all the medicines in the 
world. It is vigorous exercise without fatigue. The 
peculiar motion effectually prevents all irritation of 
cold air to the lungs, on the wintriest day. The torpid 
liver and other internal organs are more shaken up and 
vivified by the trot of a mile than by a week of feeble 
walking. The horse (and you should own and love him) 
is company enough, and not too much. Your spirits are 
irresistibly cnUvened by the change of movement and the 
control of the animal. Your sense of strength and 
activity ( in which lies half the self-confidence as to get- 
ting well, which the Doctors think so important) is plus 
one horse, with the difference from walking. As to 
pulling upon the forces of the spine and consequently 
upon the brain, it is recommended by the best English 
physicians as much the preferable exercise for men of 
intellectual pursuits. And, last (I think, not least), the 
lungs of both body and soul are expanded by the daily 
consciousness of inhabiting a large space — by having an 
eagle's range rather than a snail's — by Uving a life which 
occupies ten miles square of the earth's surface, rather 
than that " half mile" v,^hich you speak of as the extent 



HEALTH CONSIDERATIONS. 243 

of your daily walk. The cost is trifling. At this particu- 
lar season, when horses arc beginning, as they say at the 
livery stables, to " cat their heads off," you may buy the 
best you can want for fifty dollars, and his feed costs 
thirty cents a day. As the horse and the Doctor arc 
seldom necessities of one and the same man, you may 
rather find it an economy — apothecary and all. 

In that " majority " I have spoken of above, there are 
(as in all majorities), some voters of not much consequence 
individually, but still worth keeping an eye upon. Briefly 
to name one or two : — There arc so few invalids who 
arc invariably and conscicnciously untcmptable by those 
deadly domestic enemies, sweetmeats, pastry and gravies, 
that the usual civiUties at a meal, are very like being 
politely assisted to the grave. The care and nurture of 
the skin is a matter worth some study ; for it is capa- 
ble not only of being negatively healthy, but positively 
luxurious in its action and sensations — as every well- 
groomed horse knows better than most men. The Amer- 
ican liver has a hard struggle against the greasy cookery 
of our happy country. The impoverished hlood of the 
invalid sometimes requires that " glass of wine for the 
stomach's sake " recommended by the Apostle. Just sleep 
enough and just clothing enough, are important adjust- 
ments, requiring more thought and care than are usually 
given to them. For a little philosophy in your habitual 



244 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

posture as you sit iu your chair, your htngs would be very 
much obliged to you. An aualysis of the air we live and 
sleep in would bo well worth looking into occasionally. 
And there are two things that turn sour in a man, 
without constant and sufficient occupation upon something 
besides the domestic circle — the temper and the ambition. 

Thus much, of my reply to our clerical fellow-sufferer 
may interest you, dear invalid reader. Of the medicine 
of " Out doors at Idlewild " — the mingled salubrity of 
the climate of mountain and river around us — I should 
have said^more to one un-anchored in a home and a 
parish. From one who writes so frankly and sensibly 
as he, we must hope to hear again, however, and with 
another opportunity, I may again ask for invalid indul- 
gence, and return to the theme. 



A SUMMER SMILE. 245 



LETTER XXXYIII. 

Summer in December— Flippertigibbet — Idleness — Annual Quarrelsomeness of 
Dogs— Pig-influence — Ilome without a Ilog, &c., &c. 

December 17, 1853. 

How sweet is this unexpected smile from the Summer 
that we thought had forgotten us ! December, coming in, 
was more like August looking back over her shoulder. 
The pines (with their charming way of growing more 
fragrant, the more warmly they are loved by the sun) arc 
as June-like in their breathings as in their looks. Xo ! 
Summer itself was not more out-doors-y than these first 
five days of winter. And we are so helped in the enjoy- 
ment of these delightful irregularities of Xature, by the 
evergreen woods which make the leaf-fall scarce notice- 
able at Idlewild. My children are playing under the 
hemlocks. Flat on the fir-tassels in the shed, Hes their 
companion, Flippertigibbet, a smooth-haired terrier, who, 
on some days of September, looked for the sunniest corner 
of the portico ; the birds are about ; wasps and flies 
active and plenty ; my mare quite in a foam as she 



246 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

stands at the stable door, just unsaddled after an easy 
gallop home from the hills. One would not tire of such a 
day as this, to be alone with it from morning till night ; 
though there are few days, as there are few people, that 
one does not see too much of, without intervals of books 
or occupation. Blessed is idleness — for to-day ! 
***** -^ 

In my daily rides, of late, I had thought my neighbors' 
dogs rather more filibusterous than usual, and was won- 
dering whether it was owing to the frost-sieve which I 
was allowing kind Dame Nature to spread protectingly 
over my upper lip, when a friend gave me the key to 
their excitability. This is the hog-killing season ; and it 
appears, that with the scent of blood in the air, the far- 
mers' dogs become annually furious. They bark at all 
comers, even those with whom they are well acquainted, 
and, in their assaults upon the passers-by, they quite for- 
get their usual polite distinction between beggars and 
gentlemen. Pig influence, even after death, is thus hos- 
tile to good manners. One cannot " kill his own pork," 
and have also a well-behaved dog. And I must own 
that I am pleased with discovering a new reproach to 
the animal — for it is one of the obstinacies about which I 
am most reasoned with, by my household advisers, that I 
cannot consent to keep a pig. " There's an unrighteous 
amount of swill wasted," as my man eloquently expresses 



ANTI-PIG. 241 

himself — twenty dollars a year iu good sweet pork that 
you know all about." But, satisfactory as it may be to 
eat pork with which one has been previously acquainted 
in the shape of swiJl, my abhorrence outweighs both the 
economy and the pleasure. If it were nothing else, the 
I'oice of the brute is doom enough for him. (" Oft in the 
stilly night," etc.) And as one must remember, daily, 
every creature of which one is bound, as the master of a 
home, to be mercifully mindful, I will have a home with- 
out a pig — if my own taste and my dog's better manners 
are arguments that continue to prevail. 



248 LETTERS FROM IDLETTILD. 



LETTER XXXIX. 

Visit to Seven Lakes and Natural Bridge— Torrey the Blacksmith—Sunday 
in Nature— My Companion's Hobby— HoUett the Quaker— Morning Sensa- 
tions— Jonny Eronk's and its Cemetery — Mammoth Snapping-Turtle — Iron 
Mine, &Cr, &c. 

Deceiiiber 12, 1S53. 

With my friend Torrey, the village blacksmith, I made, 
yesterday (December 11th), a mountain pilgrimage of 
twenty-five labyrinthian miles — first, to stand on one of 
the peaks of our tangled Alps, from which scxtn lakes are 
visible ; second, to visit a remarkable natural bridge, 
under which rushes the torrent which fills one of these 
Alpine lakes ; and, third, to pass the Sabbath (properly 
and reverently, I felt) in God's open temple, the sky-ceil- 
ing of which was supported around us by clusters of 
mountain-tops, while the floor and area were filled, for 
this day, with a glow of autumnal light so breathless, and 
so fragrantly, and warmly luminous, that it seemed like 
jN'ature's own higher worship — a service in the outer 
dome superseding, or uniting, around one grand altar, the 
devotional light and incense of the lesser chapels of man's 
building. If I do not record the more hallowed observ- 



THE SMITH AND HIS SMITHY. 249 

ance, amid tlie details of the day's history — where it was, 
that the heart knelt and the prayer arose, where was 
heard the anthem, and where shone the face of God — it 
is not that the day was unblest with these breaks in the 
passing of its hours. It would be hard to be wholly 
undevout among mountains that seem standing hushed in 
the presence of their Maker. Yet the cattle graze and 
the brooks run, and we count the herd, and see the 
sparkle of the water, with the awe at the heart uninter- 
rupted. 

The day's interest for my fellow-horseman and myself 
was not precisely the same, though he was, very hkely, 
the greater enthusiast of the two. His mania, as he 
hammers away at his anvil in the village, is to discourse 
to his customers of the treasures of ore and minerals in the 
mountains near by ; but it was by one or two of his little 
side-mentions of what was to be seen in these same wild 
fastnesses, that my curiosity had become more especially 
enamored. It was a week ago that he was sharpening 
my mare's shoes for the coming frosts — his bright little 
smutty-nosed child, of three years of age, mounted on the 
ash-heap of the forge, and admiring the intermittent blast 
of her father's big bellows on the fire, and myself seated 
on the joist of his ox-frame, and admiring the equally 
mysterious blasts of his learned eloquence upon hematites 
and pyrites — when I proposed to him that he should 

11* 



250 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

mount my other bay marc, if the next Sunday should 
chance to be pleasant, and go and show me the great iron 
mine he talked of, where General Washington got the ore 
for the chain of tlic chevaux-de-frise across the Hudson. 
Not that I cared much to see the red earth and the holes 
in the ground, though the mine is sftill worked ; but, in 
tlic circuit to reach this locality (called the Forest of 
Dean), we sliould follow a pass through a cluster of 
mountain-tops, where the ponds were like milk-pans on 
different shelves— a score of liftcd-up lakes one above 
another, two to five miles in circumference, and scarce a 
mile of distance between them, full of fish, and fed by 
unfailing springs of bright clear water, though at an 
elevation of two or three thousand feet above the Hud- 
son. These thunder-shower tanks, so beautifully shelved 
among the clouds, I wanted to see. Torrey's friend, 
llollett, a Quaker woodsman, whose oxen he sometimes 
shod, lived under one of the mountains, from the top of 
which you could see seven of them. And llollett was an 
intelligent man, who had quite a collection of the mine- 
rals he had gathered round about, nicely arranged in his 
farm-house entry. And just below his house was the 
wonderful natural bridge, through the dark cavern of 
which passed the foaming outlet creek, which led the 
water into Popolo Pond from the pond above. It would 
be the full of the moon, and, by starting at sunrise, if the 



A LOVELY SABBATH. 251 

weather should be fme, we might visit the mines and all 
the rest of it, and get back somewhere in the early hours 
of the moonlig-lU. I quite felt the sparks fly from my 
own anticipations, when my friend's hammer came down 
on the red-hot shoe, with his promise to go. 

Probaljly even the city reader remembers- with what 
almost summer softness and loveliness this Sunday came. 
The weather chronicle of the Tribune (December 12th), 
says of it : — " Yesterday was one of the most delightful 
winter Sundays New- York has ever enjoyed, the day 
without a cloud, and tlie sun in all the glory of June." 
As I opened my door with eagerly expanding lungs in 
the early morning, I could not help rejoicing in the 
procession which I seemed to be letting in — first, my 
friend Torrey, with his long surtout and his broad- 
rimmed hat ; behind him the magnificent hemlock and 
cedar which shade my threshold ;. straight behind these, 
the lofty brow of the towering Storm-King ; and the 
radiated head of the god of day goldenly and gloriously 
bringing up the rear — each seen over the other's shoulder, 
and the blacksmith, with his fine intellect and immortal 
spirit, the fitting leader of the Five. And, by the way, 
I shall not fairly have introduced my friend to the reader, 
without mentioning that his tall spare frame is sur- 
mounted with a head that would be a sculptor's ideal of 
a Cicero — features classically correct, and the bald front 



252 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

senatorially ample in its lift and development. Even 
through the red shirt and the soot of the shop, any- 
observing traveller, chancing in, to have a shoe set to his 
horse, would feel the dignity of mind un-pedestalled. So 
have small neighborhoods their private Cicero some- 
times ! — and, to do our village justice, I think we value 
ours at the forge, as much as Rome hers at the Forum. 
We had reached the brow of the mountain-range 
immediately overhanging our village, when the sun was a 
little more than an hour high ; and, after a few minutes' 
halt to breathe our horses and take a parting look at the 
glorious Highland vase of the Hudson (to which New- 
burg and Fishkill looked like the glittering handles), we 
turned towards our State's great warehouse of mountains 
to spare, the twenty-mile wilderness of peaks between the 
Hudson and the Ramapo. Our first descent along the 
Southern ribs of the Storm-King (after thus climbing 
over bis majesty's spine), follows, for a little way, the 
stream which ends in the picturesque water-slide below 
Cozzens's, so familiar to the summer travellers on the 
river; but, curving short to the right at "Johnny 
Kronk's," we turned our backs upon "West Point, and 
pursued the loveliest of valleys along the western shore 
of Long Pond — water and woods entranciugly asleep, 
and the sunshine full of Sabbath balminess and beauty. 
How lovely this "weather" for everybody may be I 



A MOUNTAIN CEMETERY 



253 



It is all "weather"— as it is all "words from the 
dictionary "—yet some words aud some weather are in 

poems. 

But (to retrace a step) I did not pass "Johnny 
Kronk's," without preaching a little sermon at the 
promiscuousness of a cow-yard and grave-yard all in one 
—a score of marble tombstones standing in the enclosure 
of the back of the house, and the cows and pigs rubbing 
their itching skins against the unresisting epitaphs I 
Kronk is dead, and buried here, himself ; but, in his life- 
tune his house, now occupied by a tenant, was the moun- 
tain centre of neighborhood as a tavern, and its back-yard 
(oddly enough, where there is so much spare room) is 
the mountain cemetery. His children may throw slops 
from the kitchen window upon the old man's breast ; and 
his friends lie around him,— as comfortable, perhaps, 
under potato-peelings and broken crockery, for the 
present, as other people under the sod ; but, they are to 
" rise from the dead," and should lie, at least, in a clean 
place. Amen. 

Long Pond meadow, which we followed, after turning 
at Johnny Kronk's, is a kind of entresol — a half-story 
valley, between the lower story of the West Point level 
and the upper stories of the mountains beyond. It is 
famous (the Pond) for one remarkable entresol lodger, 
the only one of his kind in the country about, and an 



254 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

object of terror to the swimmers and fishermen — a mam- 
moth snap'ping-turile, whose head, by the general consent 
of all who have seen him, is "as large as your double- 
fist." He gives somebody a start, about twice or three 
times a year ; but, as the pond is two miles long, and its 
abundance of perch and pickerel may be caught off any 
rock or log, he is not fallen in with, for the rest of the 
time, and probably gains, in mystery and dignity, by the 
unfamiliar seclusion. How he came here, no one knows. 
Weir the artist, who lives only five or six miles off, 
should come up and paint his portrait, if only for the 
probability that it is the metempsychose of some political 
party out of power. "The snapping-turtle " (says 
Natural History) "is very tenacious of life, and will 
move, weeks after being deprived of the head ; and this 
last will continue to bite, long after it is severed from the 
body." Come, Weir ! Should not the portrait of this 
typical patriarch of the "Outs" and the way they act, be 
painted and hung up at Washington ? 

Our route along the Pond, lay between two ranges of 
hills ; and, as all American mountains range from North 
to South, while all European mountains range from East 
to West, we duly felt the republican groove that we were 
following in the southerly course of the valley. The 
earth soon began to be reddish in spots, and my enthusi- 
astic friend grew eloquent in pointing out the dips of the 



A MINE AND A MORAL. 255 

strata of rock, and the mineral indications of the iron 
mines we were approaching. Somewhere about eleven 
o'clock we tied our horses to the cedar-trees of the 
nnfenced wild, and I followed the scientific blacksmith 
into the caves, and around among the pick-axes and wind- 
lasses, blasting-tools and Irishmen, all idle with Sunday 
and sunshine. I was interested in the spot historically. 
The sloops that anchor off Idlewild bring up occasionally 
a link of the big chain of the chevaux-de-frise thrown 
across the Hudson in revolutionary times, for which this 
mine furnished the ore ; though, if Washington and 
Putnam had been as sharp geologists as my friend, they 
would have found the ore close by the forge on the 
Moodna, where it was worked, in a mine now yielding 
plentifully — saving thus the long track of horseback- 
transportation over the mountains. So we travel far, 
sometimes, for tlie ore of happiness that we might have 
found nearer home — a moral, I think, we may venture 
upon, with less risk of irrelevancy, in the story of a 
Sabbath day. 



266 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER XL. 

Many-Lake Alps and their Woodsmen — Highland Life — Contrast between it and 
New York, only three Hours' Distance — The Difficulty — Natural Bridge — 
Driven on the Rocks — Hollett's House, and our Ascent to the Peak — Seven 
Lakes — Quaker and Panther Meeting in the Woods, &c., &c. 

December 31, 1S53. 
[dkscription continued from last letter.] 

The inhabitants of these Many-Lake Alps are princi- 
pally woodsmen. They farm but little, even where they 
have strips of meadow on the water-courses which 
traverse their land. With the state of their mountain- 
roads, they prefer crops to which customers help them- 
selves, or which can both grow and find legs to walk to 
market — cattle to graze, sheep to browse, and colts to 
board (at pasture), for a dollar a month. It is not 
uncommon to let horses run wild through the winter, 
and they thrive very well upon the mosses of the rocks 
and the bark of the sapling elms. The sapling hickories, 
from being so saleable as hoop-poles, are jocularly called 
" the mountain-wheat." Perhaps the stranger is most 
astonished at the tracks over which these peoj^le drive 
their teams, with a cord of wood at a load. A rock of 



MOUNTAIN LIFE. 251 

the size of a Dail-keg or a flour-barrel is no obstruction 
to a wheel. The wagons are so put together as to work 
pliably like timber baskets — though, how their horses' 
legs and shoulders stand the jerking and the violent and 
perpetual twisting, I could less easily understand. At 
five dollars an acre, the average freehold price of the 
land in this region, and, with the four dollars which they 
promptly get for the cord of wood, which it is an easy 
day's work to draw to West Point or Fort Montgomery 
(their two nearest villages), a mountain farm is soon paid 
for, even without stock-grazing. The larger wood renews 
itself every twenty years, and it is very much bettered, 
meanthne, by the constant thinnings of the prolific and 
profitable hoop-saplings. There are various incidentals 
by which the children can turn a penny ; such as cran- 
berries, hickory nuts, chestnuts, black-walnuts, and wild- 
t cherries ; and, as we seemed to start up partridges every- 
where in riding along, and wild rabbits are " as plenty as 
blackberries," there can be no lack of good feeding here- 
abouts — to say nothing of the lakes full of perch and 
pickerel within sound of every man's dinner-horn. 

And, now (to digress a moment), will the reader please 
take the above statistically true picture of a land of easy 
livelihood and romantic beauty, and place it alongside of 
the harrowing descriptions of hunger and lack of employ- 
ment among the emigrants and laborers, given us daily 



258 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

by the newspapers of a city distant but three hours by 
steamboat or railroad ? The difficulty is not in an 
impassable gulf of "no money to make a beginning." 
All through this region, throughout the year, it is next 
to impossible to get " hands " enough (for the iron mines, 
clearing, and other labor) at a dollar a day — an easy 
opening for an industrious man to lay up money ; while, 
•nee known enough to be trusted, he could readily get 
trusted for the necessary land and implements to make a 
besrinnino:. But no — there are two other difficulties. It 
is too lonely for the Irishman. And neither the Irishman 
nor the Grerman can be his own wheelwright, carpenter, 
blacksmith, doctor, cobbler, tailor and schoolmaster — as 
the Yankee can, and is. The laclc of society in the moun- 
tains, and the lack of American omni-cute-ness in the 
settler, are the two difficulties. With the welcome given 
to my companion (at whose forge, of course, every man 
for twenty miles around had looked in), I saw something 
of the home of one of the Yankee mountain-farmers, on 
our route. Just inside the barn-yard, through which wo 
entered, stood the ox-frame where he shoes his own 
oxen. A new wood-wagon stood near by, just finished by 
his boys — one specimen of the many kinds of "jobs " that 
they can do. The entry was ornamented with a set of 
narrow shelves, upon which were arranged specimens of 
all the minerals of the mountains round about. A most 



THE farmer's family. 259 

plentiful diuner, to which we were cordially invited, 
smoked on the table. In conversation, dress, kind and 
intelligent politeness, and personal health and bearing, 
this farmer's grown-up family — products of this spot of his 
own earning — were fine specimens of the human race. I 
asked the hale and vigorous father, whether he ever found 
it lonely. " Oh," he said, " we don't care to be any 
more crowded with neighbors." 

But, I have a little anticipated the story of our 
route. 

We reached the natural bridge a little before noon ; 
and here my voracious hunger (with four hours on horse- 
back) got the upper hand of my romantic curiosity. 
There stood the bridge, it was true — but short of it, lay 
a mossy rock shaped like a luxurious sofa, upon which 
might be spread, between the blacksmith's reclining figure 
and my own, the various sandwiches, etc., which had been 
prepared in case of meeting with an appetite hereabouts — 
and I proposed to let the bridge stand, till we could get 
something under our collapsing enthusiasm. Torrey ob- 
jected. The natural bridge is one of the neglectednesses 
of the neighborhood about which he habitually discourses, 
and his bottled up eloquence. was just ready to pop cork 
— and, besides (as I discovered after wards J, he expected a 
better dinner half way up the mountain beyond. But I 
carried my point, being his visiting guest for the day ; 



260 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

and, with the sunshine of a genial noon of mid-December 
for a table-cloth, we spread our repast. It seemed to 
me I had never in my life before eaten with such an appe- 
tite. The picturesque scenery and hallowed stillness around 
us feasted the eyes and heart at the same time. My 
" grace after meat " was a devout recogution of the ex- 
ceeding beauty of that winter afternoon, as well as vivid 
thanks to God for a full use of the senses given to 
enjoy it. 

The natural bridge is a massive porch, covering the 
last stair of a staircase by which a cascading stream 
descends into a mountain lake. Three lovely things so 
close together, as that leaping cascade, that singular 
archway, and the lake below, could hardly be found, even 
in the composition of a landscape painter. The long 
sheet of water narrows to this point, like a receding aisle 
ending at a glittering altar-step, and far down is a little 
fairy island standing out from the shore — the garden of 
wild-flowers, perhaps, to which the descending stream has 
its errand. What Naiad, of name as yet by poet unut- 
tered, comes down those bright steps through the hem- 
lock grove, and, laying off her foaming mantle under the 
rocky porch, glides silently along the smooth floor of the 
lake?* Here is a poem in the mountains — wanting only 
its echo inked over. 

Torrey once sent a friend to see this bridge, and he 



THE NATURAL BRIDGE. 261 

rode across it without suspecting it was under him, though 
he might scat his country congregation (our friend was a 
clergyman) under shelter of the rock. It is part of the 
common horse-path around the head of the lake. There 
is no daylight to be seen under it, however. The stream, 
on the upper side, dashes into a dark cave and is lost to 
sight ; and it comes out of another dark cave on the 
lower side, the two caves being separated by a partition 
of solid rock, under the deep-down foundations of which 
the water finds its invisible way. The well, across which 
this partition rock extends, is open on the side next the 
lake, and has been plummeted to the depth of sixty feet. 
It is always kept full by springs, even when the cascade 
dries up with summer-heats — a reservoir of cool and pure 
water, ready made for the happy scenery-lover who will 
one day make his home upon this prettiest cottage-site in 
the world. I hope to stand upon the bridge and look 
down the lake to that fair island, in June, when the lake 
itself is islanded in leaves. 

My friend moused about the dark corners of the cave, 
and pulled out various minerals which would wear most 
scientific holes in a horseman's pocket. I spent more 
time in praying that the woodman's axe might spare the 
tall hemlocks on the stream above. After strolling 
around till I had got the bridge well learned among my 
lessons by heart, we remounted and pursued our way up 



262 LETTERS FROM IDLEAVILD. 

the mountain, arriving soon at the hospitable house of 
Friend Hollctt, the Quaker woodsman-farmer already 
spoken of. Here all looked like plenty, vigor, self-reli- 
ance, and independence of all ordinary usages that were 
not convenient. A dinner (for which we had just spoiled 
our appetite) smoked on the table ; but Torrey sat down, 
while our horses were being fed in the stable, to have a 
chat with his friends in the house. The shelves of mine- 
rals interested me. They showed the self-cultivated intel- 
ligence of the hard-working old man. He settled down 
there between thirty and forty years ago, when first mar- 
ried, taking the land on credit and owning little besides 
his axe, and here he is, as healthy and active now as he 
was then, a grown-up family of well-educated sons and 
daughters around him, and the three hundred wild acres, 
of which he has gradually become the independent mas- 
ter, converted by his industry into a fine mountain farm, 
covered with stock, and amply suflQcing for the employ- 
ment and the wants of his tall and strong children. A 
more cheerful, bright, healthy, and hearty home could not 
be found in the world. Such are our country's best of 
citizens, and happiest of men, I think. 

Of the hardest part of our day's doings — the ascent 
the two mountain-peaks on foot — I have not left myself 
room to say much. It was the part of the day's exer- 
cise that tried my new lease of health most severely ; for 



THE ''seven lakes." 263 

I tave scarce taken a long walk for a year, without a 
horse under me to do the walking, and it seems a short 
allowance to have only two legs and those my own. 
But I panted along, after the better wind of tough 
Farmer Ilollett and the blacksmith, and we accomplished 
our second ascent, to the highest peak, somewhere about 
an hour before sundown. It was a table summit of 
platform rock, covered with crisp moss which the Indians 
boil and can subsist upon in winter, and partly shaded 
with dwarf hemlocks and hickories. The rifts in the rock, 
and the square-angle shape of the huge fragments, look as 
if designed to accommodate hermits ; for there were 
scores of cottages with three solid sides ready built around 
a floor of stone — carpeted with moss — nothing wanting 
but a roof and a door. 

With the autumnal haze in the atmosphere, we could 
only seej^i-e of the " Seven Lakes" usually visible from 
the summit. But the difference of level, between these 
beautiful sheets of water laying around us, was startling- 
ly novel as an effect in so wild a landscape. There were 
two, particularly, into either of which it looked as if we 
might almost toss a pebble — one, fifty feet below us on 
the right hand of the peak where we stood, and another, 
three or four hundred feet below us on the left — like 
two silver balance-scales, of which one had sunk into the 
valley and the other had mounted to the sky. These lofty 



264 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

cloud tanks are from two to four miles in circumfereuce, 
and each one seems formed into a cup by four mountains 
—vases with scalloped rims — and their edges and steep 
sides looked to be of unbroken foliage and wildness. 
What stojDS for summer haunts ! To think, that for the 
price of a small house in a brick block in New York — 
say for the ten thousand dollars which a man pays for a 
barely respectable number in a street — he might here 
build a cottage and own a mountain and a lake for its 
belongings ! 

We had left our horses tied in the woods, and it was 
important to get to something like a " critter-path,'' at 
least, before dusk ; so we hurried our descent, Farmer 
Hollett accompanying us, with his active feet, as far as 
the ridge from which water would run down hill towards 
the Hudson. On the way he showed us a spot where he 
once met a panther and went at him with a hickory stick 
— all the weapon he had — the " painter" (as he called 
him) frightened out of the encounter by the halloo and 
the fury of his first onslaught. These dangerous animals 
are no more found in this region, however. 

Parting from the vigorous and bright-spirited old 
mountaineer with real regret, we started for home in the 
gathering twilight — eight or nine miles of hill and 
valley stretching away before us. In the glow of the full 
moon which was soon flooding our way with silver light, 



THE RETURN. 265 

it was a beautiful ride, even with the scenery of leafless 
winter. The road soon grew smooth, our horses were 
fast, and my friend was most instructively eloquent upon 
local history as we passed along. I left him at his shop- 
<Joor, somewhere about eight o'clock, and, hitching his bri- 
dle over my arm, I trotted home with my led horse — 
three good appetites, at least, entering my own moonlit 
gate together. 



12 



266 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 



LETTER XLL 

Degrees of Horseback Acquaintance with a Road — Slaughter-IIouse " Roimd 
by Headley's" — Geese and their Envy— Goose-Descent upon Unexpected 
Ice, Ac, &c. 

January 7, 1854. 

I FIND there are three degrees of horseback acquaint- 
ance with a road. First, you are charmed with its 
novelty, and see only its beauties. Second, the novelty 
wears off, and you see its unsightly spots, and tire of it. 
Third, you become habituated to it, as the place for 
exhiUrating exercise or for indulgent reverie with slacked 
bridle, and then it is a friend — the spare friend of undiS' 
cussed confidences that one needs — listening always, 
blaming never. Considering how much the roads are 
talked of, both as to preference and comfort, by all kinds 
of people living in the country — ^how much more than the 
brooks and rivers — it is a little strange that it has never 
been thought poetical to nanie them. I could be very 
tenderly fanciful about one or two that I know — infallible 
dis-irksome-izers, within a gallop of Idlewild — but that 
the world, growing less romantic, might prefer to know 
them by the mile-posts. 



THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSE, 267 

But the world is, at least, ready for a fact ; and I may 
tell, statistically, how one of my road-nymphs is lately 
desecrated beyond all hope of poetical naming. " Round 
by Headlcy's " we commonly call it — an upper road, 
along the bank of the Hudson, on which our friend the 
hero-grapher built his beautiful house, and the most 
charming of carriage-drives, aveuucd with cedars and 
country seats for miles. As the finest rural outlet from 
the handsomest streets of Xewburgh, we drove over it 
often, , particularly with friends and strangers, whom we 
wished to inij^ress agreeably with tlie scenery between 
Idlewild and there. The house, consecrated by having 
once been the house of Durand, the artist, is at the 
Quassaic bend of the road. But Ncwburgh has a new 
prosperity. With the trick of milder winters that the 
world has got into, it has been found necessary that the 
Ohio pork should die nearer to market. To the Xew- 
burgh end of the railroad, therefore, it comes with legs 
down instead of up, and the hundreds of thousands of 
postponed Ohio deaths take place at this point of 
embarkation for the city. While the pig's jpost mortem 
road (down the throats of Xew Yorkers) is thus made 
sweeter, no doubt ; the road I speak of, on the heights 
above the Hudson, is made almost impassable, at one 
point, by a different stage of the same sweetener in pro- 
gress. Just out of reach of the suburbs, on an ascent 



268 LETTIORS FROM I D L E W I L I) . 

cresting a romautic curve, wiiuliug away towards the 
liills, wlicre I oftcncst drew rein to show tlie stranger a 
]andscai)c unsurpassed — close to the road and as inevit- 
able as a toll-gate — has arisen one of the fruition-halls 
where the i)ig-dcferred passes into the dignity of pork, a 
slaughter-house as long as AVestminister Abbey, and 
filled with a wilderness of busy butchers. Oli, the obitu- 
ary notice of these deaths, which one gets, first and last, 
on the publishing winds I It has stopjjcd off that upper 
road, for me. And, indeed, for the other end of the pig- 
Styx there launched upon — the resurrection as a roasted 
cliine, glorified in gravy — I must confess a prejudice not 
lessened by the knowledge of these last moments. 

Drydcn speaks of the copyright a man has in his own 
nose ; and there seems an invasion of such copyright, 
certainly, in a slaughter-house, which waylays and takes, 
uninvited, possession of the traveller's sense of smell for 
a mile. Should there not be some more definite legisla- 
tion on this subject ? A law prescribing a distance, for 
this class of buildings, from any public highway, would be 
grateful, at least, to the nostrils of Newburgh, with its 
increasing business in Ohio disembowcllings. It might be 
advocated, indeed, as a protection to life, from the terror 
which often seizes a horse in approaching the vitiated 
atmosphere. INly own team requires some persuasion of 
whip and voice to go past the golgotha I speak of. 



GOOSE MUSIC. 2G9 

This law seems a necessity for the nose. But I sup- 
pose one may venture to name a law that would be a 
luxury to the cur — in the way of promoting agrccableness 
in the road one daily rides over. A statute providing 
that every adult goose should he muzzled, when turned 
loose on tlie public highway, would remove, for me, a very 
considerable nuisance. There arc few farmers who have 
not their flock of geese. It is an animal tolerant enough 
of mediocrity — a slow pace, as you pass along, provoking 
no very hostile notice. But the high stepping and fast 
trotting of my blood mare is distasteful, as far as my 
experience goes, to all geese, far and near ; and, from 
every pond and puddle that I pass, comes out their 
chorus of hostility. With music from almost everything 
else — cow-bells, horse-neighings, snow-bird twitterings, 
hoof-patterings, mill-streams, ice-crackings, flails, wind- 
sighings, and telegraph-wires — the discord, the only one 
discord in the wayfarer's anthem, as I hear it on the road, 
is from the screeching throttle of the goose. As it is not 
only unmusical but unmeaning — a silly rage provoked by 
nothing — we might reasonably muzzle geese, by a law 
recpiiring some show of sense or reason in any utterance 
thrust upon the public. 

But I had a laugh at a goose, yesterday — with a lesson 
in it too. Coming home, towards evening, with my 
wagon-full of children, the air over our head was sud- 



270 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

denly darkened by tlic wings of a very big bird — my 
neighbor's fattest waddler, who, chased by a dog, liad 
concluded to up feathers, fly over the barn, and take 
refuge in the ever-reliable and long-tried bosom of the 
river. But it was the day after the first sharp frost, and 
the stream, though as clear as crystal, was of icy smooth- 
ness, and as impenetrable as a rock. Down came the 
goose, with full faith in it for long-tried water — and the 
way she slid over, and brought up at the frozen bank 
opposite, after that heavy bump upon her astonished 
egg-basket, was boundlessly dehghtful to the children. 
Besides the instruction in it, as to a winter-trial of 
summer friends, it was a comfort, with a pleasant spite in 
it, to have one good laugh at a goose that waddles and 
screams after me every time I trot past my neighbor's 
barn-yard. 



BETHESnABAY. 271 



LETTER XLII. 

Pool of Bethcsda above the Highlands — Climate of Highland Terrace— Lat« 
Snows — Christmas, and Dressing of Church — Poem on Farmers' Christmas 
Preparations — Black Peter — Snake Love of Solitude, Ac, &c. 

January 14, 1858. 

Sajiuel B. Ruggles, our State's torch-bearer and prc- 
historian of Internal Iinproveinent, has mapped down the 
majestic river-pa^ss throuu^h tlic Ilii^hlands as the Gate 
from the Western Lakes to New York and the Atlantic. 
To our American Palestine, New York is the Jerusalem; 
and, outside this its gate, physicians have now located a 
"l>ool of Bethesda" (the Bay above the Ilighlands), 
such as blessed* the outside of the gate to Jerusalem of 
old. With the healing that is found upon the beautiful 
shores of this spread of the river, it might be called 
Bethesda Bay, with Scriptural propriety ; though the 
augel that goes down and troubles the healing pool is the 
morning and evening breeze ; and the " first stepping 
in," after the " moving of the water," is a correspond- 
ingly enlarged cure for many instead of one. 

Writing from this Bethcsda, I feel bound to chronicle 



2T2 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

for invalids its allotments of climate ; and, by compari- 
son with the reports of the weather in Boston and New 
York, there seems to be a protection to our Highland 
Terrace in the arm of monntain-range that encircles us. 
There was sleighing in Boston at Christmas-tune, and a. 
snow-storm in New York ; and yet, here, the temperate 
and bright autumnal weather (without a flake of snow) 
lasted till the evening of December the 28th — the river 
navigable till then, and our roads as hard and dusty as in 
summer. For the invalid who wishes to ride, and clings 
to the liberty of open air, this is a blessed belating of 
the coming of imprisoning winter. Of the twenty human 
souls who form the homestead census of Idlewild, none 
but the two lately born (one in my tenant's cottage and 
one in my own) would have found it cold idling out of 
doors, any noon till the third after Cliristmas. 

But, with what bridal apparelling winter came I The 
sleigh-bells have rung merrily from the first evening of 
snow (it is January 3, as I write) ; and, with neither 
thaw nor high wind, the eider-down cloaks of the ever- 
green trees in the procession, are scarce disturbed — a six 
days' wear of white favors, unusual even for Winter's 
evergreen bridemaids, while the icicle groomsmen of the 
New Year hang round the church with splendor quite as 
undiminished. 

And the beautiful church within a mile of Idlewild — 



A CHRISTMAS POEM. 2*13 

a most Euglish-rural and tasteful Gothic cliapel of stone 
— was charmingly arrayed iu the evergreens of our neigh- 
borhood, home as it is of hemlocks and cedars, laurels 
and ivy. llow like the glow of a smile from within the 
altar — a Redeemer's smile — seems this time-honored 
brightening of the church at Christmas I Esto pcrpctua ! 
It is a custom that should be followed by all churches, of 
all denominations. A simple and admirable poem on the 
subject, came to me yesterday, and I will insert it here, 
suggestively and comracmoratively as well as admiringly : 

TUE farmer's rREPARATIOXS FOR DRESSING A COUNTRY CHURCH 
WITH EVERGREENS AT CHRISTMAS. 

EMANUKL. GOD WITH MS. 

To work! to work! ere rise of raoon •, 
Lo ! Christmas-tide is coming sooa ; 
The church needs many a fresh festoon. 

'Midst heaps of glossy evergreen, 
The farmer's daughter now is seen 
With busy hands and dimpled mien. 

Here are no palms in victor pride, 
But mountain-laurel branching wide, 
And dwarGsh pine from bleak hillside. 

"We do not feel of palms the loss : 
Come, let us weave a green-leaved Cross, 
And write god's name in wild wood-moss. 
12* 



274 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

Come! write the word ''Emanuel,'' 
And add, "God with us," lettered well, 
And arch-wise let it eastward swell. 

Wreaths, for the Iccturn of the priest, 
On each side-wall three rings at least ; 
A green star for the rosy East ! 

Above the panes the Star must shine, 
Above the consecrated wine, 
And lift all hearts to hopes divine. 

Thus shall the farmer's quiet home 
A greenhouse of the Lord become, 
A fore-court to a heaven-high dome. 

The gentleman who sends me this simple and beautiful 
common-life poem, says only that it was a favorite of one 
now cold in death, who, last Christmas, assisted in dress- 
ing their village church — but, though it reads like verse 
by George Herbert, I suppose it to be now first 
published. 

The oldest Idlewild-ian passed Xew- Years' day with us 
— ^black Peter, who, years ago, had charge of the farm 
of which our seventy-acre glen was the wilderness 
portion, valued only for its wood. The old man has been 
three times bought and sold as a slave, and I have men- 
tioned liim before as famous for the way he was always 



SNAKES LOVE SOLITUDE. 275 

loved by the cliildren. lie is decrepid now, mid goes on 
crutches, and lives alone in his hut under the mountain ; 
but his memory is good, and he tells me where stood the 
monarch pines and primeval cedars we would give so 
much to replace — touching stories, to me, of beauty and 
stateliness that have here lived their half century and 
passed away. We muse on the coming round of our 
turn, when such a wheel of oblivion is brought to view I 
A chance thread, like this poor black cripple's admiring 
remembrance, the only bridge bnck from the world's easy 
forget fulness ! 

But, while the children spread out their Christmas 
toys before old Peter on the parlor floor, I stumbled on 
a scrap of knowledge in his rag-bag of experience. 
Wondering, that, in my two years' acquaintance with so 
wild a place as the glen, I had seen but two snakes : he 
said, snakes were slow to come back after they were once 
driven away. And sheep drove these away. Not that 
the sheep were the enemy of the snake, for they never 
took any notice of one, that he knew of. But a snake 
must be where he can sleep uninterrupted ; and, put a 
flock where you please, they will walk over all the ground 
they can get at — good feed in one corner of the lot 
making no sort of difference. It's seeing a sheep every- 
where, that the snakes don't hke. 

My servants being colored people, and my daughter's 



276 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

nurse, who has had the care of all her bright eleven 
years, having been also a slave, Peter was a symposiarch 
among his social-hearted race for the day. They made 
much of him. At night they loaded themselves into the 
double sleigh, to take him home to his hut with company 
and merry bells — a visit of the sunshine of love to a 
spot, where (from its being under the north knee of the 
Storm-King), there are six winter weeks that the sun 
does not look in at his door. I wish there were more 
like old Peter. The mixture of unembarrassed self-pos- 
session, simphcity, and respectful courtesy, which mark his 
manners, belong to a class that is fast passing away 
uncopied. 



THE FAMILY WAGON. 277 



LETTER XLIII. 

Trip of the Family Wagon to Newburgh — The Fashionable Resort — Chapman's 
Bakery — Aristocracy " sctled down" — Newburgh as a Neighbor. 

Januaty 22, 185S. 

TnE daily trip of the family wagon to Newburgh is 
the lump of sugar which it requires to make winter seclu- 
sion f palatable to wf, "cold without") palatable to the 
less whirlsated tastes of children and servants. Ah, 
the event that it is ! — its arrangements and discussions — 
the spare seats, and who are to have them — time of stait- 
ing and list of commissions — probabilities of weather and 
proper cloakings and bonnetings — room for bundles and 
baskets, and plans for calls by the way ! And, with 
errands varying in importance, from a skein of silk to a 
friend expected by the railroad, the charmingly unfailing 
possibility of a package by Express I I had never be- 
fore realized how much there is, if not of necessity, at 
least of inspiriting variety, in daily change of scene for the 
inmates of a home in the country. City servants, parti- 
cularly, are kept contented by having a possibility of it, 
at will. Children's spirits fairly effervesce with it. Par- 



278 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

lor and kitchen are furuislied by it with mortar for the 
bricks of daily duties and conversation. It seems un- 
equal allotment for a household, to have all prisoners 
within home and around it, except the master ; and the 
master's sparkle of life is very much increased by the 
expansion of home-talk for all — the incidents on the road 
and the shoppings and sight-seeings, the meetings with 
friends, and the variations of light and shade upon hill 
and river. Of course I am not myself the Jehu, on these 
errand trips. It takes all the memory and management 
of Bell (my Yankee tenant and lesser-anxiety-man), to 
discharge the divers responsibilities of such a load of 
treasures on a pilgrimage of trifles. Even if I had the 
necessary un-fret-ability and hour-glass recoverableness 
from exhausting innumerablenesses, however, my lungs 
cannot stand the inactive exposure of a drive. I am off 
on horseback, meantime, resting my powers of attention 
while another animal exercises me. But I get the news 
of the wagon-trip at the tea-table, and it is all the live- 
lier that we have separate excursions of which to tell the 
adventures. 

Newburgh, our country-town, has twelve thousand in- 
habitants, and a long thoroughfare of shops, perpetually 
thronged with the custom of a rural population for twenty 
miles around. The farmers' wagons fill the street, and the 
farmers' wives and daughters crowd the sidewalks and 



chapman's bakery. 219 

counters. Each store has most things that are possible, 
to sell, and there arc three equivalents giveu for goods — 
talk, produce and money. The expect-to-be-beat-dowu-age, 
in the first charge for an article, is about twenty-five per 
cent., though, for a regular customer, who spends without 
this skirmish of 'cuteness, allowance is goon made. Few 
encounters of sharpness are fought out with more skill 
and pertinacity, probably, than the purchase of a calico 
dress to be paid for in eggs or butter. It would interest 
the inquiring observer to have a bargain for a pocket- 
comb pending alongside. 

But, the most interesting shop of Xewburgh would 
never be found out by the stranger. It is, indeed, 
curiously contradictory in its looks and its " run of cus- 
tom." You would go in and out of it, and describe it as 
a cheap bakery — one of those old-fashioned dingy half- 
shops, with a long single counter, on the street end of 
which is a glass-case for tarts and cake, while the remain- 
ing extension is covered with fresh loaves, scales and 
w^eights, brown paper and gingerbread. It is partly a 
grocery, too ; and behind you, against the wall, as you 
stand at the counter, are boxes of herrings, drums of figs, 
coffee-bags, pea-nuts, starch, soap, lemons, candles and 
brooms. At the far end, where the bags and barrels are 
set back to give a foot or two more of space, there stands 
a cheap old stove, with a rusty funnel running up to the 



280 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

ceiling, and one or two old wooden cliairs around it. In 
all Newburgh there is scarce so shabby an old shop. Yet, 
in all Orange County there is not an apartment which 
receives daily such an amount of aristocratic society. 
With the first settlement of the town, Chapman's Bakery 
was the stopping-place of the vehicles of the wealthy 
families of the country around about ; and spite of a 
modern and spacious confectioner's shop, a little farther 
on, and larger and more comfortable "stores" of every 
kind, near by, the descendants of the old-family aristo- 
cracy have continued to make the narrow baker's shop 
their place of gossip and gathering. Towards noon of 
every pleasant day, winter and summer, the handsomest 
equipages of the neighborhood begin to assemble along 
that part of the sidewalk of Newburgh. The gentlemen 
hand the ladies into the shop, and there, for two or three 
hours, is the place of rendezvous after the dififereut 
errands of each, the place to be found by their friends 
from a distance, and the place to exchange news and gos- 
sip away the morning. There are no better horses, more 
well-appointed turn-outs, or neater coachmen, on any pub- 
lic promenade in the country than are daily to be seen 
here. The gentlemen who group about the flag-stone 
step or inside the little glass door, are of high considera- 
tion in the city, for their fortunes and family names. The 
ladies, who lay their costly handkerchiefs down upon the 



THE FASHIONABLE LOUNGE. 28] 

flour-barrels, and sit around the stove in the old whittled 
chairs, and cat ginger-nuts at the counter, are very 
fashionable persons, in full promenade toilette. And so 
crowded is the long shop, between eleven and two, that 
the boy, who has looked in at the bow-window, and come 
in for his cent's worth of gingerbread, fairly elbows his 
way into the " best society" to get at it. 

But the curious part of Chapman's Bakery is, that it 
suffices for the social want of a large and wealthy neighbor- 
hood. There is no other society. Nothing like a " party" 
is ever given by any of the rich frequenters of the bakery. 
Dinner parties (in the common acceptation of the word 
among people of the same fortune) are unknown. Even 
calls on each other, at their own houses, arc rare. And 
this is from no intended economy of time or money. They 
lead lives of ample leisure, and are as liberal and cordial- 
hearted a set of people as any in the world. But the 
restless liquid, society, has here been permitted to stand 
still, and this (the social chemist will be interested to 
know) is the natural precipitate. The Ducal Cascine at 
Florence — that centre of the public drive, where all the 
equipages of the fashionable meet and stand still at a cer- 
tain hour — is the Chapman's Bakery of the Tuscan court 
and nobility (only that they differ from the Newburgh 
aristocracy in wanting balls and suppers besides.) The 
English exclusives need a Hyde Park for a comparison of 



282 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I 1. D . 

equipages, matinees for comparison of out-door toilettes, 
and dinner parties and routs for exchange of ideas and 
bettering of acquaintances — but all these " first princi- 
ples" are met and their wants supplied by Chapman's 
Bakery, at Xewburgh. Whether the bubbling champagne 
of fashionable life all over the world, would, if left long 
enough to itself, settle down into the same small modicum 
of fulness of the social glass, is — open to discussion. 

One thing should be taken into consideration, perhaps, 
in all estimates of either the public enterprise or sociality 
at Newburgh. The town is, in fact, at the end of a long 
street of Kew York. Though fifty miles from the city, 
the railroad runs to and fro constantly, like an omnibus, 
and a large proportion of the well-off class transact business 
and have their circle of acquaintance in the city, though 
their families reside here, for better air, and for fine 
houses and gardens at less cost. There is less concentror 
lion, therefore, than is common in towns of the same size — 
less pride in the public improvements, and less dependence 
on the society of the place. The core of what would be 
the society, under ordinary circumstances — the Chapman's 
bakery of wealthy and well descended families — is without 
the usual tributary and emulous outer circles. In the 
handsome streets of comfortable houses and tasteful villas, 
on the upper side of the town, the residents scarce know 
each other, and feel no interest in the large estates of 



A r L E A S I N G V A R I K T Y . 283 

the gentlemen of fortune in the neighborbood. The far- 
mers who bring their fiimilies in, to trade and shop, are 
again another public, and the migratory thousands from 
the city, who throng the Powelton and other boardinjr- 
houses in the summer, are still another ; and thus New- 
burgh has scarcely an identity of its own— the Faubourg 
St. Germain of Chapman's Bakery excepted. 

But all this varied population makes very good shops 
and a very good sidewalk. To go to Newburgh is, in 
fact, a digestible meal of daily food for curiosity, compared 
with the glut and satiety of Broadway. It is four miles 
from Idlewild, a most convenient distance for just such a 
variation of solitude in the country — the ftunily wagon 
which bridges between, being (to the children and ser- 
vants) our golden link with a world else revolving with- 
out us. In my own circuits round, by the mountain-roads, 
I am apt to come home by the way of Newburgh — my 
sweating mare cooling her legs with a walk through the 
streets, two or three times a week, at least — and I con- 
fess to its pleasant airing of my gregariousness, at the 
same time. No, I should not like to have Newburgh 
farther off, nor nearer — though I pitched my tent with- 
out the thought of its propinquity as a neighbor. Like 
the moon and the stars, it is a much-used addition to our 
"extent of property," though not charged among the 
taxes. 



284 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 



LETTER XLIY. 

Personal Experience interesting to Invalids — Difficulty as to Horseback Exer- 
cise — Advice as to Winter-riding — Economies in Horse-owning — New Idea as 
to Exposure — Philosophy of Exorcise to Scholars, &c., &c. 

Jiiniiarij 28, 1S54. 

I HESITATED mucli befoTC committing recently to print 
what might be thought but the button-holding story of 
an invalid — knowing well that the Public cannot properly 
be troubled with one's personal experience, unless it adds 
to knowledge upon points of common interest — but, by 
the extensive copying and comments of the Press, I find 
that my record of the results of horseback-exercise in all 
weathers was thought noteworthy ; and upon this I can, 
perhaps, throw a little additional light, by such minuter 
details of experience as may be valuable for invalid 
guidance. First, let me give a corroborative letter from 
one of the readers of this paper : — 

" In the Home Journal of 10th instant, I find a letter from ' An 
Invalid,' with your answer. I am induced to tell my story. I 
have beeft on the invalid list for twenty-five years. In October, 
1834, by the advice of my physician, I prepared to remove to St. 



THE nORSEDACK REMEDY. 285 

Augustine, Florida. All things were ready— my strength was not 
sufficient to leave for a few days, A friend had just been elected 
Sheriff of this county, who offered me a situation where I could 
spend as much time as I chose on horseback. I accepted the 
offer. The first six months were spent in great agony 5 but I found 
my strength improving. It is now nineteen years since I com- 
menced the Horseback remedy for tubercular consumption. In 
that time I have travelled on horseback many thousands of miles. 
I have now my business so arranged that I am compelled to ride 
sixteen miles each day. I allow no state of the weather to inter- 
fere with the ride, as I am always prepared with proper clothing 
to resist cold or wet. My health is now good ; perhaps no man 
enjoys better health. My disease was and is tubercular consump- 
tion. I have no reason to think that the tubercles in my lungs 
will ever be dispersed, but I do know that they can be kept in a 
quiescent state by proper exercise in the open air. With this in 
view, I shall continue the use of the saddle, in the open air, whilst 
I have strength to do it." 

This is a stronger case than my own, somewhat, but it 
is the more confirmatory of my impression that the 
unceasing jolt of exercise in the saddle is preventive of 
any chill to the lungs, from cold or wet, while they profit 
by the change of air — the spirits at the same time 
enlivened by rapid motion and the perspiration started 
and kept up icithout effort or fatigue. That a fast trot 
of ten or twelve miles will soothe and refresh the lungs, 
when the ascent up a flight of stairs will irritate and set 
them to bleeding is a certain fact, which makes the 



286 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I L D . 

imfatiguing nature of saddle-exercise a point of some 
imj)ortauce. 

But a gentleman, who writes to me from Maryland, 
mentions a difficulty. He says : 

" I am aware how completely yom' time must be occupied by 
writing and reading ; but should you be able to catch a moment 
of leisure, I shall be obliged to you to let me know what you 
think the warmest and most protective costume for a horseman in 
winter. I have a fine Morgan mare which I rarely back on account 
of cold toes and shivering legs. I usually prefer pedestrianizing, 
though there are seasons of the year when my horse and myself 
almost form a Centaur." 

The old farmer's remedy for " cold toes" on horseback 
is to hang the feet out of the stirrups for a few minutes 
— the removal of the pressure, from the sole, letting the 
blood flow into the extremities more freely. But, as per- 
spiration might be checked, especially when going against 
the wind, by the slower pace at which one would ride 
without stirrups, a safer remedy for the invalid would be 
larger boots and an extra pair of stockings. There 
should be no scrupulous nicety, in fact, in the "horse- 
man's costume " for a cold day. Clot/ies enough, is 
the simple prescription. The woollen leggins, such as 
are worn by the English drover, would be recommendable 
if they could be bought iu this country ; but your heaviest 
pair of pantaloons, enlarged two inches on each leg by 



PROTECTION FROM COLD. 28*1 

strips let iuto the two outside seams, and drawn on over 
those of the usual wear, answers as good, or better pur- 
pose. A shoe-stirrup can be bought of Bull the saddler 
in New York, which shelters the feet from the wind. 
And there is a short cloak called a " Talma," which you 
can buy, at present, at the ready-made-clothing stores in 
New York (a most classical and beautiful garment which 
cheap Fashion for the Many has chanced to stumble 
upon), which is exactly suited to the wants of the horse- 
man. The half-sleeve gives the arm play, while it pro- 
tects it, and the ample Imt short folds just come to the 
saddle. 

Cold, however, was never a trouble of mine on horse- 
back, even with the thermometer at winter's lowest. The 
sharp air may have a chance at the lungs, perhaps, in 
getting mounted and started ; but Dr. Hall's excellent 
hint to delicate persons going from a hot concert-room 
into the night-air — "keep the mouth shut, and breathe 
only through the nostrils " — is an effectual guard for these 
two or three minutes. After that, the motion gives 
warmth enough — only there should be no slow riding, and 
it should not be a horse with a rocking-chair canter or a 
shambling rack. A fast and even trot — of the jolt of 
which, by rising in the stirrup, you take as much or as 
little as you please — is the best pace for keeping the 
whole body warm ; while (an anatomical double-action 



288 LETTERS FROM IDLEWIL D. 

which the doctors may explain in learned words) it both 
wakes up the lazy liver and lulls to rest the cough-weary 
lungs. Oh the blessed let-up — the soothing intermission 
— the merciful stop-at-last of a fast trot, after a long night 
with a cough unappeasable 1 A triple blessing, indeed — 
for the rested and braced invalid comes home with a well 
man's appetite. 

There is one other horse, view of the subject, upon which 
I may say an instructive word. Pulmonary patients are 
apt to be poor men — clergymen, students, authors, school- 
masters, bookkeepers — and a daily ride is an expensive 
prescription. As a friend said to me, " you speak, in your 
letter to invalids, of a fifty dollar horse fed for thirty 
cents a day, but no tolerable horse can be bought in the 
city for less than three times the money, and the ' keep' 
is five dollars a week." 

With city expensiveness in luxuries one cannot very 
well argue, it is true. The invalid with slender means 
should, for that and other reasons, go to the country. 
But there is a burthensome superfluity next door to this 
burthensome want, in cities, and it seems a pity that the 
two should not be brought together. The stables of the 
wealthy are full of horses fretting in the stall for want of 
exercise. Even those which go out every afternoon for 
a short drive, would be in better condition and more 
manageable, if ridden eight or ten miles in the morning. 



THE COST OF A HORSE. 289 

Kow, wby should uot America have its republican liberal- 
ization of the courtesies between wealtli and intellect ? 
The clerg-yman or the poor scholar in Europe feels no 
scruple of delicacy at borrowing a look from the rich 
man's library. Might we not en'arge the limits of inde- 
pendent reciprocity so that the American clergyman or 
poor scholar may feel no scruple of delicacy at borrowing 
a horse from the rich man's stable ? There are few intel- 
lectual consumptives who have not some friend with this 
superfluity of cure for consumption. It might easily . 
become an incumbent courtesy, for the owners of fine 
horses, to inquire whether their clergyman, or the instruct- 
or of their children, or some favorite author of their 
acquaintance, would not be kindly benefited by the spare 
use of these costly belongings. 

My friend's disparagement of my jpricc of an invalid's 
horse ('' fifty dollars") prompts me to turn over my expe- 
rience, and I think I may, perhaps, give a hint or two 
upon this point, that will be useful to the country-resident 
portion at least of the un-practical class, at whose needs 
my remarks are aiming. 

As a luxury, ownership in a horse varies with a man's 
means. At a cost above what he can afford to lose, it 
becomes a care and an anxiety — the intellectual invalid, 
of course, having those already overtasked powers of 
attention, to which any additional trifle to be nervous 

13 



290 LETTERS FROM IDLEAVILD. 

about is a doable evil. With the liability of these domes- 
tic favorites to disease and accident, it is, at best, bu t 
skittish property. To be only a comfort, it should be a 
horse that is old and sagacious enough to know what is 
good for him — a horse uot too valuable to lend — a horse 
that can v,^ork in the farmer's team, when, from illness, or 
absence, or interruption, you cannot exercise him your- 
self. It need not be a poor horse, vv'ith all this. It may 
be the remainder of a good horse. And there is a large 
number of this class of animals always for sale at low 
prices — just enough left in them for an invalid's using. 
"With good feed, slight and regular work, and kind care, 
the overworked creature soon recovers spirit and looks, 
and though severe usage again would immediately break 
him down (as the farmer or jockey knows who sells him 
to you), he will be as lively and handsome in your keep- 
ing for years, as one of four times the value, and much 
less liable than a younger horse to disease or accident. 
Give one of your shrewd Yankee neighbors the "fifty 
dollars," tell him exactly how much of a horse you want, 
and ask him to make the purchase for you. 

My own winter-riding has lately been valuably varied 
by the encouragement to an important freedom as to its 
time, suggested by a chance remark in a medical essay. 
The day, at its summer length, being much too short for 
my daylight avocations at Idlewild, and not half long 



HINTS AS TO EXERCISE. 291 

cnougli ia winter, I had found the passing of two or three 
of its best hours in the saddle (for exercise only, and 
with such inexorable punctuality in all weathers) a consi- 
derable tax. My eyes, which were long ago unfitted for 
lamp-light work, were, besides, blinded sometimes by the 
brilliancy of the sunshine on the snow. Winter nights 
being also less windy than winter days, and the roads 
frozen harder and drier, I had often wished that night- 
air were not so emphatically tabooed by the Doctors — 
this taboo preventing my day from being three hours 
longer and my ride from being cleaner and less of a battle 
with gusty winds and dazzling snow. Thus, ready for wis- 
dom, if it should fall in my way, \ stumbled upon the fol- 
lowing remarks by a medical man, upon air and exercise : 

" Avoiding out-door air for the hour about sunrise or sunset, 
there is no danger even to invalids, in exercising in the night- 
air, if the exercise he sitfftciently vigorous to keep off a feeling 
of chilliness. This should be the rule in all forms of out-door 
exercise, and is an infallible preventive, as far as my experience 
extends, against taking cold in any and all weathers, provided it 
be not continued to over-exhaustion or decided fatigue. Such 
exercise can never give a cold, whether in rain, or sleet, or 
snow, unless there be some rare peculiarity in the constitution. 
It is the conduct after exercise which gives the cold — the getting 
cool too quickly — by standing or sitting still in a draft of air, or 
at an open window, or in a cold room. The only precaution 
needed is to end the exercise in a warm room, and there remain 



292 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

until rested and no moisture remains on the skin. * * « 
With the above precaution you need not he afraid of out-doop 
air, NIGHT OR DAY, as long as you are in motion sufficient to keep 
oflf a feeling of chilliness. * * * Confinement to the 
regulated temperature of a room, in any latitude, is certain death, 
if persevered in. * * * The great object is, useful, 
agreeable, profitable employment, in the open air, for several hours 
every day, rain or shine, hot or cold ; and whoever has the deter- 
mination and energy sufficient to accomplish this, will seldom fail 
to delight himself and his friends with speedy and permanent re- 
sults. * * * jf vrorking or walking cause actual 
fatigue, then horseback exercise is the best for both sexes.'' 

The prisoners to the desk, to the study, to the school- 
room — too busy all day t?> exercise, and afraid of night-aiv 
upon the lungs — will see a ray of bright comfort in this 
extract, I am very sure. It is a channel between their 
Scylla and Charybdis. And there is an incidental advan- 
tage and luxury in " air and exercise " the last thing before 
sleeping — it stretches the limbs, and quiets the nerves, and 
cools the brain, and so performs that invisible and inward 
undressing for sleep, of which the outward undressing is 
often such a weary incompleteness. There are those, too, 
who are fatigued through the day with the sight of peo- 
ple, and who need utter solitude with their exercise — no 
lookers-on except the uncatechizing, un-greeting, un- 
scrutinizing stars. To others, the poetry of tliis pulse- 
quickened and heart-glowing companionship with beautiful 



NIGHT EXERCISE. 293 

jS^iglit — earth and its wintry uusightliness made indistinct, 
and heaven in its unblemished breadth all brightened — 
will be balm to the soul, taken in with health for the 
body. It will be understood, I suppose, that I speak of 
this only as a variety in exercise, to be used with care 
and discretion. I have supposed an invalid who could 
saddle his own horse, at starting in an unseasonable hour, 
and stall and blanket him on his return. And I have 
supposed a short, quick ride, upon a road familiar to the 
horse and his rider. To those who walk, only, however, 
for exercise, there are fewer difficulties ; and to such it 
will be even more a relief to know that there is medicine 
in night as well as in day. 



294 LETTEPwS FROM IDLE WILD 



LETTER XLV. 

Snow and its Uses — Winter View of Grounds, as to Improvements — Old Women's 
Weathei'-Prophecy — Finding of an Indian God in the Glcn — Idlewild a Sanc- 
tuary of Deities of tli6 Weather — Namo of Moodna, etc., &c. 

Februat^j 4, 1S54. 

A LIGHT fall of snow is a wonderful generalizer. It 
does for scenery what tlie shroud does for the memory of 
a friend — not only concealing defects, but showing capa- 
bilities scarce dreamed of when every trifle was in sight 
— revealing, to our surprise, sometimes, how near perfec- 
tion it was, after all, when we were despairing over its 
little blemishes and irregularities. Those who have 
"grounds" to improve, should not lose the winter oppor- 
tunity of seeing them covered with an uncut snoio-sioard. 
The rough field, the bare rock, the accidental or irregular 
path does not then prevent the eye from taking in, at a 
glance, the natural expression of the spot ; while tlic 
lawn of unbroken whiteness throws into strong relief 
every clump of shrubs and every grove and tree — the 
slopes and curves also showing of what combinations they 
are capable, and so suggesting improvements necessary 



W E A T II E II - P R P II E C Y . 295 

for the desired o7ic-fu:ss of effect. To " buy a place," mid- 
winter, after a light snow, is a better time than midsum- 
mer. The leafless trees reveal to you, then, what views 
may be cut through. You see what the foUage happily 
hides, and where it hides too much. And then — (like 
the more comfortable confidence after seeing a sweetheart 
in dishabille)— the sight of your landscape-passion in 
winter makes you feel that you kuow^ what you are 
loving, in the after-pride and glory of summer. 

"The winter weather," say the old women, "will be 

mostly woven according to the threads of the first three 

days." And thus far rt has proved true. The first of 

December was fair and mild— so was the general weather 

of December, winter's first month. The second was mild 

and changeable — so has been January, the second month, 

thus far. The third was bitterly cold— and so will be 

February, the third month, if the oracle hold good. We 

have had but three or four days of sleighing, up to the 

present one day's blanketing of the fields (January 22 ), 

and, for six or eight days near the middle of this 

wintriest month, the hills and meadows have slept quite 

bare in autumnal sunshine. I scarce know whether to 

wish for more snow or less. It perceptibly enlivens the 

spirits of country-people — partly from the exhilarating 

atmosphere it brings, and partly from the variety that it 

makes, in vehicles and occupations— but they rejoice as 



296 LETTERS FRO 31 IDLEWILD. 

mucli when it goes as when it comes. The air of our 
climate, complained of as too dry, is agreeably moistened 
by it, the snow air being commonly said to be pleasant to 
the skin. The worst inconvenience of snow, to me, is the 
ball that it makes in the horse's foot, and the consequent 
irregularity and uncertainty of his gait under the saddle. 
" Grease the frog," say the farmers, but that lasts only a 
mile or two. With fast riding it soon sponges out, and 
then, with a ball in the foot and a man's weight on the 
back, the most active horse runs great risk of a sprained 
ankle. Without the refuge of blue spectacles, the 
dazzling glare of the sunshine on snow would make 
prisoners of the weak-eyed classes in sleighing-time, 
though Nature has perhaps provided against this evil by 
making it short of stay, or changeable in color where it 
is perpetual. It grows red in the Alps. ^^ Ipsa nix vetus- 
tate ruhescity^ 

We were fortunate enough to identify, yesterday, a 
mysterious inmate of Idlewild who has been the subject 
of a great deal of discussion. In taking advantage of a 
drought to clear away the loose rocks and enlarge the 
small lake in the depths of the glen, summer before last, 
the ox-drag turned up something which immediately 

* Saussure observed red snow on the Bevern in 1760, and on gt. Bernard in 
17SS. Ramond met with it in the Pyrenees, Captain Ross in Baffin's Bay; 
Parry, Franklin and Scoresby collected it in still higher northern latitudes. 



THE UNKNOWN RELIC. 291 

attracted the curiosity of the rnen. One of them lifted 
it up to me, as I stood on the bank — to all appearance, a 
spirited bust, carved in gray rock. Whatever it was, I 
had seen many worse likenesses of mankind, and there 
had evidently been great pains in the cutting of it. The 
crown of the head was broken off, but the lower part of 
the face remained, and the neck and shoulders, and the 
fold of the drapery across the breast, were still complete. 
The design was that of a head turned aside with a look 
of aroused attention ; and to me it seemed exceedingly 
expressive and well conceived. It has since been our 
principal investment of Barnum, but among those who 
were called upon to wonder at it, of course there were 
unbelievers. Some said it was cut for a fishing anchor 
to a canoe — some that it was a two-handed pestle to 
grind corn. A stone tomahawk and other Indian relics 
had been found in the glen, however, and, with these, it 
was carefully preserved as an aboriginal antiquity. 
Placed on the mantel-piece in the library, between 
Petrarch and Tasso, it was treated with respect, at least, 
till our friends and neighbors had all given an opinion 
upon it. Latterly, I grieve to say, it has been used to 
crown the upper shelf of the hat-stand in the hall ; 
and, being a little smaller than the heads of most of 
our visiters, the spirited chin has daily been the drop- 
ping limit of hat-rims — apparently a disrespectful likeness 

13* 



298 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

of a gentleman with his tile smashed over his nose and 
eyes. 

But, yesterday, our friend Copway, the Ojibbe\yay 
chief, took us in his way on a lecturing excursion through 
the neighborhood ; and, in passing tlirough the hall, he 
stopped, surprised, before the nameless bust on the hat- 
stand. '' What !" he said, " you have an Indian god, 
there I" He looked at it a little closer, as I told him 
how we had found it. '' It is the god of The Winds and 
the Birds" — he continued — " Mesa-ba-wa-sin." He then 
explained to us that there were five Indian deities : — the 
gods of War, of Hunting, of Medicine, of Fishes, and 
of Winds and Birds. They had their particular shapes ; 
and their images carved in stone, were usually hidden 
away in the most secluded places where offerings could be 
carried to tliem and securely left ; and it was easy to 
understand, he thought, why one should have been found 
in so wild a fastness as our almost inaccessible glen. And 
so was solved the mystery of Idlewild I It was the sanc- 
tuary of the god of the Winds and the Birds — the nearest 
mountain (which I had instinctively named the Storm- 
King) being his Yicegerent upon the cloud-compelling 
throne, and the multitude of birds, for which our ravine 
is famous being his winged priesthood — whom (happily) 
I have chanced vigilantly to protect, with a love for their 
beauty and their singing. Of late, by the way, the 



AN ABIDING MONUMENT. 299 

miserere of the nigbt-owl has becii unusually frequent and 
prolonged in the precipitous hemlock grove under my 
window ; and tlie iron crosses have l)een blown, in a 
whirlwind, from the Gothic points of the roof of our 
Highland Chapel. I gave a vague look at Mesa-ba-wa- 
sin, as I remembered these precedents of his recognition. 
He shall be duly honored with a fitting place and a pedes- 
tal ; and his storm-ushers, his priesthood of birds, shall 
be reverently looked upon — those as' they pass in their 
robes of cloud, and these as they sing on their swift ser- 
vice with their bright colors and shapes of beauty. 

But our neighborhood deserves the smile of Mesa-ba- 
wa-siu. We have just commemorated au act of Indian 
heroism ])y naming a village and a post-office after Mood 
na — the chief who gave his life to save the white woman 
from the tomahawk. There is no monument, after all, 
like a word that will be often repeated. The old sachem, 
as he rose from his scat in the council aud stepped for- 
ward to receive the blow for her, who was meeting 
death to be grateful and true to him, lit a fame-star on 
the spot where he stood. It should burn, and the spot 
be known by its light and by his name, while the world 
stands ; and so it will be, now — his noble deed better 
commemorated by this baptism of perpetual repetition than 
it could have been by the costliest column of marble. 

We have a busy neighbor in this little village of 



300 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

Moodna. Hidden away as it is, in a deep-down crook of 
the swift tributary to the Hudson — out of sight from the 
main thoroughfare of travel and from the eminences of 
the country around — it is nobly watered for its mills, and 
kept under a thriving headway of prosperity by industry 
and enterprise. The cotton factory of the Leonards, a 
large machine-forge, and the spacious paper-mill of 
Carson and Ide, employ a stirring population of two or 
three hundred operatives — their bells at morning and 
noon, their flickering lights by night, their playing child- 
ren and familiar faces on the road, all combining to 
make a spot of lively variation, in a part of the country 
otherwise secludedly and only agricultural. It is a covert 
picture of life, if you like to go to it. And, for those 
who are interested in the maze of ingenuity and industry 
which turns rags into those beautiful fabrics that receive 
our thoughts, the Moodna paper-mill would be a resort 
of no little interest and curiosity. We are pleased to 
know, that, from the next glen above us, are always going 
loads of the fairest of every variety of note and letter 
paper, (sixteen hundred j^ounds a day, the makers tell 
me), and, as they are about to add to their extensive 
works, with the increasing demand for it, we shall soon 
find our letters to be but return-birds — Moodna paper 
coming home to roost, with the messages it has picked 
up in its flight. 



LECTURES A PLEASANT NOVELTY. 301 

In the rural village of Canterbury, a mile or more on 
the other side of Idlewild, we have lately had a beginning 
of more life. Copway lectured successfully to an audience 
of a couple of hundred, exciting great interest for the 
remnants of his people. And Clarence Cook comes to- 
morrow, to give the same audience a lecture on his 
passion-theme of '' Gardens." We hope yet, as a 
neighborhood, to be a regular customer for the thought- 
market of the Lecturer. It is a delightful novelty — this 
coming of a load of thought upon one subject, to be 
given to a whole community at once, exacting a sympathy 
in knowledge, and socially promoting its spread and value, 
as single and different books, read by individuals at home, 
never could. 



302 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD 



LETTER XLYI. 

Hudson Frozen Solid — Boata on Runners — Water-lilies — Indian Legend, and 
Poem on it by a Friend — Philosophy of naming Streams hereabouts — Angola 
and its Epidemic — Story of Smart Boy, &c., &c. 

February 11, 1854, 

The Hudson is frozen solid, from tlie Storm-King's 
foot to Danskimmer, but the ice seems rather to acce- 
lerate than hinder navigation. A sail-boat upon three 
runners — the hinder one rigged upon a piviot, and operat- 
ing as a most effectual rudder — has been flying over the 
ice to-day with a velocity quite marvellous, and tacking 
and rounding-to so gracefully and instantaneously that it 
is a pity it can only be done when the swallows are at 
the South — their preeminence at a short turn being a 
nose out of joint, just now, for this neighborhood. From 
the distance of the shore, the runners are invisible, and 
the flying craft looks like an ordinary boat ; while its 
unnatural speed and the tangle of horses and sleighs 
through which it zigzags, in the thoroughfare between 
Fishkill and I^^ewburgh, makes a strange confusion of 
sails and trotting horses, to an unaccustomed eye. With 



STORY OF THE LOTUS. 303 

locomotives passing continually on both sides of the river, 
and the multitudes of skaters in every direction, velocity 
of all kinds seems easy enough. 

The first of February is the spoke of the Year's wheel 
of Seasons that leans towards Spring ; and, in the coun- 
try, we are already contriving for the softer months we 
shall now drop upon in succession. Among the things to 
be done, we have not forgotten the water-lilies to be 
anchored in Idlewild brook — the seeds of which were 
kindly sent us by one of our fair parishioners at the 
South. They shall have their safe corner out of the 
freshet path. And our nameless friend, by the way, will 
not be sorry to know that we have a new poetry for the 
lotus. When Copway, our Ojibbeway friend was here, a 
day or two ago, he told the children an Indian legend of 
the water-lily — how it came to earth — heavenly flower 
that it is. One of our fair neighbors, who chanced to 
be a listener, thus rendered the beautiful story into verse . 

A star looked down from its glowing throne, 

Iq the azure-vaulted sky, 
And said, " I am weary here all alone, 

Doing nought but throb and sigh. 

" Far down in the valleys of earth, I see 
The red-men's children at play — 
The innocent sound of their careless glee 
Rises faint on the air all day. 



304 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

"I will speak to the braves at their council fire, 
And ask them to let me dwell 
"Where earthly love may warm my heart, 
With its human, holy spell.-' 

So they told the star she might come at night, 
When the wood and the wigwam were still. 

And sit on the mountain, and throw her light 
Through the vale and along the hill. 

She came, all trembling, but, when the morn 
Woke the birds and the children again^ 

The star sat grieving and all forlorn. 
For she knew that her hope was vain. 

" Not near enough yet ! I can hear and see 
The red-men's children at play, 
But they waste neither wish nor thought on me, 
From morn till the close of day!" 

Then they bade her alight on the tree-top old. 
That lulled them to sleep with its song ; 

And she rocked and wailed, and shivered with cold, 
Impatient the whole night long. 

At length the children awoke once more. 

And they heard the pine-tree sigh, 
But took no heed of the watching ctar 

Between them and the sky. 



SHORT NAMES FOR LONG CREEKS. 305 

She saw them skimming, in light canoe, 

O'er the lovely lake below ; 
But the longing that hourly tenderer grew, 

How could she make them know ? 

She pondered another night away, 

And at length when morning brake, 
She dropped from her height, with a hopeless plunge, 

And sank in the silver lake. 

The star was shivered ! But every ray 

Was caught by a faithful wave ! 
Each scintillant beam grew a snowy flower, 

Where she thought to find a grave! 

^d when the red maiden, in birch canoe, 

Seeks lilies for bosom and brow. 
The star is content, for she softly says, 
" I have conquered ! They love me now /'' 



The hostility, in this part of the country, to names of 
long descent, makes rather uncertain wedlock for the lilies. 
The streams to which these Southern nymphs come to be 
wedded, are scarce known by the same name, for any 
two consecutive miles. Our large '' creek" (larger than 
the Avon), for instance, is known as the Moodna, for a 
mile or more from its junction with the Hudson. It then 
begins to take the names of the different farmers through 
whose lands it successively passes. The main branch 



306 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

comes down for eight or ten miles through what is called 
'' The Clove " — (the main valley-pass, in our amphitheatre 
of mountains, toward the South) — and, all along this 
beautiful valley, it has as many names as there are dwell- 
ers on its banks. It is "Smith's Creek," "Townsend's 
Creek," " Sawyer's Creek," " Cox's Creek," etc., etc.— 
ending only with the name of the brave old chief Moodna ; 
although it is to be hoped that his heroic memory will, in 
time, send that name up stream, as great deeds usually do, 
imprinting it on all that flows from the same sources. 

"The Clove" has a curious local celebrity. Its main 
township, Angola, is famous for the number of inhabitants 
who have hanged themselves. As the population is 
strictly agricultural — a class certainly not addicted to ex 
cess of imagination — and the cases have been invariably 
of mediocre persons, " doing pretty well," and with no 
special unhappiness on hand, the suicides have been diffi- 
cult to account for. It is only the English who hang 
"from weariness of buttoning and un-buttoning." My 
friend the blacksmith, by the way, showed me a grave- 
yard on the hill-side, in our trip through the Clove, the 
other day, and told me a story which would show that 
imagination may grow v/ild, hereabouts. They were 
burying a man, during the revolutionary war, and were 
just sliding the coffin into the grave, when one of the 
mourners gave the alarm of a "red-coat" concealed 



REVOLUTIONARY ANECDOTE. 307 

among the bushes. Down went the dead man, and was 
left standing on end while the "funeral" took to its heels 
— returning no more to the grave-yard for that afternoon. 
But, the next morning, there was some careful reconnoi- 
tering by the relatives, and, after some trouble, and a nar- 
row escape of a new alarm, the red-coat turned out to 
be a sassafras-bush — the scarlet berries having loomed 
up rather bright, with the sun's breaking out, just then. 

Dull-witted, the people of this region certainly are not, 
if one may judge by their children. A little way back 
among the hills, we had ridden up to a very secluded 
farm-house ; and, while my friend was making some in- 
quiry, I opened conversation with a little puny-looking 
chap, of eight or ten years of age, who sat astride a log, 
disembowelling a grey squirrel. A younger sister sat also 
astride the log, facing him, and a still younger one looked 
on from a little distance. As he took no notice of our ap- 
proach, but went on, spreading the skin out, to nail it to 
the log, I was compelled to force myself upon his poUte 
attention. 

" Where did you get that squirrel, my boy ?" 

" Shot him," he said without looking up. 

"Yourself?" 

"Myself." 

" And what are you going to do with the skin ?" 

"Is^othing." 



308 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

'' But," said I, " why not make a far glove of it ? 
There are four legs for your four fingers, and tlien you 
can run your thumb out at the mouth and use those little 
teeth to scratch your head with," 

The boy quietly puckered up his little mouth, and cocked 
his eyes sharply up to me, as I sat over his head on horse- 
back. 

" Suppose," said he, " that you just come and scratch 
your head with it first !" 

By the hearty laugh of my friend the blacksmith, I 
saw that I was not as triumphantly facetious as I had 
expected. 

But it is only where hickory-trees grow, that a boy of 
eight or nine years of age, who does not see a stranger 
once a year, would think of measuring wit with any stray 
horseman who might try to crack a joke upon him. 



THE li Y -T E A M S T E R . 309 



LETTER XLYII. 

Boy-Teamster — Our Republic's worst-treated Citizen — Boy Condition in the 
Country — Our Neighborhood suited to Boy-Education in Farming — Vicinity of 
New York Market — Boy-Labor and Boy-Slavery — City Parents and their Dis- 
posal of Boys — Gardening Profits, &c., &c. 

Jtrarc7t4,lS54. 

Having bespoken some chestnut post-logs, a while ago, 
from a farmer in the mountains, I found them duly 
delivered on the different spots as directed ; but it was 
not till the last of the eight or ten loads, that I chanced 
to see the teamster. He was throwing off the lieavy 
sticks and laying them in a neat pile, as I came up, and I 
stopped to take a second look at the dexterity and ease 
with which it was done. He was a slight-made and 
handsome little fellow, not quite fifteen years of age ; 
and, with that double team and as heavy loads as could 
well be laid upon a wagon, he had made the trips alone — 
the four mile distance being mainly a descent down the 
mountain-side, and by as precipitous and rough a road as 
could well be called passable. Twice back and forward, 
between sunrise and night, he did what would l)c called a 
very fair day's work for a hired man at a dollar a day. 



310 LETTERS Fr'oM IDLEWILD. 

Constantly applied to, as editors naturally are, fox 
information as to "places " for boys in the city — and tlio 
rage throughout the country seeming to be to plunge all 
" boys that mean to be anything " into the seething cal 
dron of city life — I have felt my curiosity, for the yeai 
past, turned to such casual observation as I could make 
of hoy-condition in the country. Tlie above-mentioned 
instance is one of many that I have noted, as illustrative 
of the value of boy-labor. With my farming neighbors, 
and with working men, I have gossiped considerably 
about the proportion of farm work that requires the main 
strength of a man, the treatment of boys generally, the 
cost of their clothing and schooling, and the opportunities 
given them for reading or for relaxation. I have come 
to the conclusion that the worst-treated citizen of our 
^^ great and glorious Republic '^ is the boy on a farm. It 
seems also very evident to me that there is no occupation, 
at which, while learning the art of it, a boy can so well 
earn his livelihood and reserve some daily leisure for him- 
self. And it seems to mc, too, that, considering the 
healthiness of it, the out-door variety of its work, and 
the neighborhood of rural liberty and amusements, the 
case and simplicity of its acquirements as a pursuit, and 
the certainty and readiness with which its knowledge can 
be early practised for himself, it might be of all appren- 
ticeships, the most attractive to a boy. 



THE DIGNITY OF FARMING. 311 

I wisli to write down a few suggestions on this subject, 
but with no aim at a direct and present reform in 
country-boy condition. The present race of sliort- 
sighted and tyrannical farmers, who take boys from the 
work-houses, and '' get all they can out of 'em," must 
first die off. Public opinion must be so changed, and 
boys' rights so well understood, as to over-rule farm 
tyranny ; and this is a work of time. The pauper boy 
will not be decently treated, probably, till the next gene- 
ration. But, meantime, the rush of " all the intelligence" 
to the cities needs to be checked ; farming needs to be 
rescued from its present stigma of being " only work for 
the stupid ones who can do nothing else ;" education and 
science need to be added to the farmer's business necessi- 
ties ; and (last and perhaps not least J pride in it, as a 
profession for a manly boy to prefer, is to be carefully 
contrived for and sustained. "With our American shop- 
keeping getting to be more and more overdone, and our 
American farming yearly complained of, as meeting less 
and less the wants of the country, it is clear that the 
standard of respcctalility, for this class of our population 
needs raising. Farm Colleges and Farm Schools are excel- 
lent seed-sowers for this. They are principally endowed 
and started as Public Institutions, however, and as such 
are cumbrous and slow to get into popular operation — 
besides the political bias and sectarianism that are among 



312 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

their difificulties. While grafts and seedlings from these 
nurseries may doubtless be transferred to any soil or dis- 
tance, and do well, it is safer, we may say, to have the 
plant first talce root where it is to grow. My object, at 
least, is to show how boys might be made farmers in this 
neighborhood, and commence the acquirement, here, of a 
farmer's independence of means. I may treat the subject 
somewhat locally, perhaps ; but the material that I find 
around me at Idlewild, may be suggestive, to others, of 
more to be found elsewhere, and so give incidental 
impulse to an inquiry by which every neighborhood may 
profit. 

I find the farmers generally willing to admit that a 
boy's work for four hours a day, would fairly pay for his 
board. In pushing inquiry as to the different kinds of 
farm work, I find, too, that there is but a small portion 
of it which is beyond the strength of a well-grown lad of 
fifteen. For ditch-digging, hay-pitching, cradling of 
grain, wall-laying and heavy ploughing, they would 
depend, of course, on the main strength of a regular 
" hand ;" but for sowing, light-ploughing, hoeing, weed- 
ing, carting and scattering manure, reaping, thrashing, 
and all the lesser industries of stock-tending and barn 
work, a smart boy is often as caj^able as a man. This 
applies to grain farms, or to those mainly devoted to hay 
and stock. Where the produce is only fruit, or vege- 



PROFITS OF MARKET GARDENERS. 313 

tables for the city market, the work is easier, aud perhaps 
the whole of it could ho done by boys. 

The people of this neighborhood have discovered, 
within a year or two, that they have exactly the right 
soil, distance, and facilities, for supplying the New York 
market with fruit and vegetables. The freight-steamers 
which leave our Cornwall dock at eight or nine in the 
evening, reach the North River wharves at three in the 
morning. Everything put on board is taken charge of, 
on commission, and sold to the market-men in the city ; 
and the cash (minus the per-centage) returned with the 
baskets and barrels. The only trouble the gardener or 
farmer has, is to deliver his produce on board. He does 
this, of course, easier than he could cart it to the market 
from within five miles of the city, and with less care aud 
cost, and better preservation from accident aud jolting. 
At present, the produce j^asses through two or three 
hands before it is sold to the city consumer ; but by a 
combination of two or three to establish stalls supplied 
directly from their own farms and gardens, these several 
profits would be reserved (as they rightly should be) to 
the original growers. And, with the high city prices, 
they would thus be most profitably paid. 

It has been found that the rocky and cheap lands at 
the bases and on the sides of our Hudson River moun- 
tains, are particularly favorable to the growth of the 

14 



314 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

Isabella grape. Several of our neighbors have goue into 
this culture very largely. When it is remembered that 
the pioneer of this particular growth (Underhill of Cro- 
ton Point) estimates the year's product of one acre of his 
grape vines at a thousand dollars, and that the land 
about here, which is thought to be even better soil for 
the purpose, may be bought for from fifty to a hundred 
dollars the acre, the opening for enterprise (in connection 
with the market facilities ) seems ample. For fruit-trees 
of most kinds, this same mountain-terrace soil is very 
favorable. It is an old custom in this part of the 
country that the farmers' wives and daughters should 
have the profits of tlie farm fruit for theh* fin-money; 
and, from the intelligent commission-captains of the 
freight-boats, I easily procured a little statistic on this 
subject. The pin-money paid at Cornwall dock — or the 
proceeds of fruit from a neighborhood, say four miles 
back from the river and two miles broad — amounted, last 
season, to between eighteen and nineteen thousand 
dollars. 

The table-land behind us, walled in Ijy our circle of 
mountains, has been treated like a rough and out-of-the- 
way corner of the world, poorly farmed, and bought and 
sold at v^ry low prices. Farms that would be every way 
suitable and convenient to supply the New York market 
with fruit and vegetables (as stated above), may be 



B Y - L A B R K E C I 1' R C I T Y . 315 

bong'lit lor iVom tifty to a lumdred dollars an acre — the 
fancy-mile within view of the river, and the fields of old 
and rich cultnrc, of course excepted. Almost anywhere, 
from two to six miles back, an enterprising- and skilful 
gardener might establish himself with small capital, and 
commence in the second year to realize a large profit on 
his investment. And it is the labor on this kind of farm 
that could be done almost exclusively by hoys — better 
done by them, indeed, for it is mainly an exercise of intelli- 
gent attention, for which the Irish laborer is vexatiously 
incompetent. 

But boy-labor, to be reliable for the master, must not 
be boy-slavery. It must be enlivened and steadied by an 
understood footing of reciprocities between boy and mas- 
ter — both having an interest in its being faithfully done. 
And this is a state of things that could not be entered 
upon to-morrow, with the present general idea of how 
boys may be used. Information is sadly wanted on this 
subject. The most valuable addition that could be made, 
just now, to "literature for the people," would be a 
manual of boy-employment and treatment — defining his 
rights like those of a hired man, giving the terms of an 
agreement for his labor, specifying his privileges of spare 
time and agricultural instruction, describing the care of 
him by the mother of the family, and plainly stating the 
ways to make him think for himself and respect himself, 



316 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

and so be thought of and respected by tliosc around him. 
With this kind of understanding, every intelligent farmer 
could profitably take half a dozen boys to work with his 
one or two hired men, and teach them farming while 
allowing them to play enough and read enough as well as 
earn enough — a Utopian idea for the present, perhaps, 
or, one, at least by which the j^oor boy is not likely to 
profit for a while. 

There is a class of boys, however, fur whom I think a 
beginning might be made immediately practicable — the 
sons of parents who could clothe them, provide them with 
books, and sec to their schooling and incidental wants for 
the first year, [The dothes^ by the way, are the sore spot 
in boy wrongs in the country, and the extinguisher to 
that lay j^ridc, without which his character becomes the 
fruitful soil for rustic meannesses. Among the old 
farmer's " dodges," the excuse for all his overworkings 
of the boy is " the money it costs to clothe and school 
him " — while the poor lad's habiliments arc the remainders 
of the old man's worn-out coats and trousers, fitted and 
patched with such skill and taste as Ileaven may have 
vouchsafed to the old woman's needle. The consciousness 
>(No. 1) with which the " young farmer " walks about in 
a pair of patched and big-breeched pantaloons, " fitted by 
only cutting the legs off at the knee, and the consciousness 
(No. 2) with which he hears himself glorified by apoliti- 



SUGGESTIONS AS TO A FAR U S CHOOL. 317 

cal orator, a few years after, as the country's " independ- 
ent bulwark," " bone and sinew," " Nature's gentleman " 
and " best citizen," arc two points between which, to say 

the least, there is a chasm.] 

City i^arents, who know what city "prospects" for a 
son arc likeliest to end in — and who, unable to give him 
a college education, wish him to enter upon the pursuit 
that will soonest support him and be least liable to 
reverses — are those who oftcnest wish to make farmers 
of their boys. These can commonly afford to clothe the 
lad, and provide him with books, for the year or two 
years that he is a beginner and earning only his board ; 
besides taking him home for two or three months in the 
winter and providing him with the means of going to and 
fro. It is from this class that I think the boy-labor of 
vegetable and fruit farms, m this neighborhood, would be 
eagerly supplied. There would need to be, first, pro- 
bably, an example. And this would, perhaps, be some- 
thing of the character of a farm-school — except that the 
labor of the boy would pay for his board and his tuition 
in farming. He would be an independent laboring boy 
rather than a scholar. But the employer should be one 
who would take proper care of his health and conduct ; 
and the farm should be a large one, worked by a suffici- 
ent number of boys to make the enterprise worth a 
superior man's while. It would be very easy to arrange 



318 LETTERS FllOM I D L E AV I L D . 

a system by which each boy should have his corner of a 
garden to be worked in spare hours of his own — or it 
might be possible that the rent of the land, the cost of 
seed and labor and the profits of the crop should be 
shared by them as a community of gardeners under a 
superintendent employer. There are many shapes which 
the unquestionable utility oi boy-labor might afterwards 
take, to be turned to profit. But the heginning I hope 
for, and think easy in this neighborhood, is for some one 
intelligent farm-gardener to let it be known that he will 
give boys board for their work. With the scarcity and 
uncertainty of Irish "hands" at the critical season when 
labor is most wanted, boy-labor would supply a dejiiand ; 
and, the demand once begun to be supplied from the 
wilderness of unemployed *' Young America " in the 
cities, our wasting race of farmers would soon be 
re-stocked. We know of one or two capable men, among 
our neighbors, who, with the aid of capital to enlarge 
their conveniences and add to their stock, tools, etc., 
would at once enter upon this system. 

There are progressive steps of agricultural life under 
this phase, of course, which would follow in due succes- 
sion. A literature for the boy-class of farmers is wanted 
— beginning with a simplification of so much of the 
science of soil and products as the youthful mind could 
readily understand. Other and correlative knowledge 



SETTING-UP OF A YOUNG FARMER. 310 

might be selected and combined into a 'series expressly 
designated The Young Farmer's Library. A newspaper 
for them would soon flower upon this stem ; and it is not 
difficult to imagine that the pride and enthusiasm of boys 
throughout the country might thus be gradually interested 
in the pursuit. 

One word as to an important point — the subsequent 
setting up of the young farmer for himself. It would be 
but a " middling sort of chap," in this part of the country, 
who should have lived and worked in a neighborhood, for 
years, and not have character and credit enough to get 
" trusted " for land to live upon. Almost every one of 
our oldest and now independent farmers took his land 
originally on that tenure. But, while a much smaller 
quantity of land is wanted for the skilful and well 
practised gardener, the profits are far beyond those of 
ordinary farming. The soil increases in value, too, under 
the hand of the cultivator. By purchasing forty acres, he 
could so improve, while taking off crops, that twenty 
would sell, after four or five years, for more than the cost 
of the forty. This has occurred so often, hereabouts, as 
to be calculated on, among regular prospects and 
resources. And it is for this facility of a first start on 
arriving at manhood — a start upon character without 
capital — that I should advocate the education by boy- 
labor upon single farms, in preference to education in 



320 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

Farmer's Colleges. Ever so well instructed, in a large 
institution, the youth is adrift, when he leaves it. To 
have a farm (as a stranger wishing to settle anywhere), 
he must buy and stock it, with " money down." And, 
not only has the laboring boy the advantage of having 
supported himself, and extended his roots of character 
and credit where he means to grow and flourish, but 
the practice of his agricultural education has been upon 
the soil, and in the climate, and among the associations, where 
his future industry is to be applied. He is already at home 
when he begins — already familiarized with the obstacles 
and resources which so vary with different locality. 

Hoping soon to see our Highland Terrace, of ten miles 
square, the vegetable and fmit garden of New York, and 
cultivated mainly by boy-labor, I shall keep an eye on 
facilities as they open among us, and return to the 
subject. 



COUNTRY DISAGREEABLES. 321 



LETTER XLYIII. 

Living in the Country all the Year round — Trips to the City — Hindrances by 
Snow on the Track — Chat in the hindered Cars — Mr. Irving — Bad Ventilation 
— Late Arrival, &c., &c. 

Marc7i 11,1S54. 

Living in the country all the year round, has its occa- 
sional misgivings of worth wiiilc. There are " spells of 
weather," as the country people call them, which, for a 
day or two at a time, in this northern climate, make all 
out-doors intolerable. The " sloshy going " is discourag- 
ing enough — when the snow is just so much melted with 
a raw east wind as to hold water six or eight inches deep 
on a side hill — but this, though it makes an island of the 
house, imprisons only those vintager snails,* the women 

♦Nature seems to have distinctly endowed some of her creatures with the in- 
stinct and faculty of doing without open air for long periods. Of the peculiar 
snail that lives upon the grape, Berneaud says : — " On the approach of winter, 
tlie vintager snails, several together, retire into holes in the earth, shutting the 
openings of their shells with a calcareous operculum., and not making their 
appearance again till the following spring. Our ladies certainly have this " cal- 
careous operculum," or some other compound of in-door resignation, unknown 
to the ruder sex. 

14* 



322 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I L D . 

and cliildren. There is a worse stage of winter which 
imprisons also man and horse — the cold after a thaw, 
when the roads are an impassable slough of false mud, 
and the animal that you ride plants one foot safely on the 
surface, but can scarcely extricate the other from the 
stiffening mud in which he " slumps " to the knee. There 
is no exercise to be got by riding, and walking is out of 
the question. The lungs pine for expansion. Blood runs 
slow. Sidewalks and omnibuses begin to loom up with a 
forgotten glory. 

In watching the railway trahis from my library win- 
dow, I find I have no feeling of being-left-behind, except 
in the un-get-about-able weather. Happily at rest while 
others are wearily urged onward — or tiresomely on a shelf 
while others have liberty to change the scene — are two 
impressions receivable from the ' same smoke of a flying 
locomotive in the distance. I should often start for a 
week in the city, with the latter feeling, if it were not 
for the horse in the stable, and the chance of out-doors 
freedom to-morrow ; but, last week, the winter's " pro- 
tracted agony " got the upper hand, and, with my 
"1,000,000 pores" voting for a change of air, I gave 
in. And, of some of my experiences in getting to the 
city, I may as well make a passing chronicle — adding, as 
it will, to an understanding of that life hereabouts which 
it is the object of these sketches to illustrate. 



A ''pleasant" t r I r . 323 

We usually speak of the city as about two hours dis- 
tant ; and, thougli a snow-storm came on in the night, 
after my preparations to go, I thought it would be such 
a ploughing as I had frequently seen to offer little or no 
impediment to the trains during the winter, and started 
from home at daylight to meet the cars, in full faith of a 
noon in the city. As I did not reach my hotel till the 
following midnight, and did not get my baggage for still 
eighteen hours more, the reader will see what slovenly 
service it is, after all, spoken of so grandly by the philo- 
sopher : — " Man is a world, and hath another world to 
attend on him." A pocket full of crackers may be a very 
comfortable addition to such a couple of worlds. 

Missing the Newburgh-and-Erie train, which goes down 
upon our side of the Hudson, and then driving four miles 
in an open wagon against a snow-storm of powdered 
needles, and crossing the river to Fishkill by a ferry 
made doubtful by the ice, I got seated in the cars some- 
where between nine and ten o'clock, thinking, that, for 
this trip of pleasure, the Compensation Office must have 
taken the payment in advance. We started well enough 
out of the village. The rails had been cleared by the 
brakemen. A little farther on, among the rocks, how- 
ever, the drifts began to look formidable, and I soon saw 
that we had been reached, in the Highlands, by only a 
thin skirt of the storm of the night before. The drifts 



324 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

grew deeper and deeper — our headway slower and slower 
— and finally, in a rocky gorge, just opposite Cozzen's 
Summer Hotel, we came to a stand still for the day — a 
tall snow-bank on each side (neither of them " a bank 
whereon the wile-time grows") our only prospect from 
the windows. We found afterwards that the stop was 
partly from a dread of meeting an up-train and running 
the noses of the two locomotives together under the 
snow ; and that the delay of the up-train was owing to 
the break down of an engine — but our several halts 
chanced to be in spots where the demand for " pies and 
cofifee " had not been anticipated, and the cause of the 
delay was less thought of than the famishing consequen- 
ces. At one place, I believe, a passenger or two waded 
back a long distance to a country grocery of which they 
had got a glimmer in passing, and found biscuits and gin- 
gerbread ; but the remaining stomachs of our own train, 
and those which kept accumulating behind us from the 
West, " bore on " with unassisted resignation till mid- 
night. 

We Americans are a patient and merry people under 
difficulties. I do not think travellers have sufficiently 
given us credit for this national quality of jolly indomita- 
Ueness. The successive additions to our long line of trains 
stretched to very near a mile, by sundown, and a mile 
of more gay and cheerful people — hungry as they all 



WASHINGTON IRVING. ' 325 

were — could not be fonnd on a French holiday. A foot- 
path was soon tracked through the snow, along one side 
of the cars, at each stopping-place, and merriment 
resounded under all the windows — everybody apparently 
acquainted with everybody, and no sign of the fretful 
grumbler that would have abounded in such a disap- 
pointed multitude in Europe. Yet most of those five 
hundred jokers were business men, to whom the delay 
was a serious inconvenience. 

One of our long halts was under " Sunny Side," Irving's 
residence. It was long after dark, and the car was double- 
filled — the passengers had been condensed into the for- 
ward trains, to detach as many cars as possible, and so 
save weight. As many persons were standing up as sit- 
ting down. Conversation was general, and whoever " had 
the floor " was heard by all. One man announced that 
we were but a stone's-throw from Washington Irviug's. 
" Well," said a rough-looking fellow from the corner, " I 
would rather lay eyes on that man than any man in the 
world." " I've seen him," said another ; " he looks like a 
gentleman, I tell you !" And then they went into a dis- 
cussion of his various works — two ''strong-minded" 
ladies who were on the front seat taking a lively and very 
audible part in it. [Chancing to meet Mr. Irving, two 
days after, at the Astor Library, and finding he was at 
home at the time, I inquired whether his ears had burned, 



326 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I L D . 

about eight o'clock on a certain evening ; but, as he said 
" no," there is less magnetism in a car-full of compli- 
ments thoai would be set down, for that quantity of elec- 
tric influence, probably, by the Misses Fox.] 

The only ill temper that I discovered, during the four- 
teen hours of unfed delay, was between those who cared 
for fresh air, and those who preferred the allowance of 
about the ventilation they would get in a coffin. With 
the standing and sitting passengers, and the cars motion- 
less, the atmospheric vitality within was exhaustible in 
five minutes at furthest ; and, strangely enough, most of 
those sitting at the windows after dark refused to open 
them. I suffered painfully myself from the foulness of the 
atmosphere, all day. Then the stove was kept almost 
red-hot, and with the snow brought in by the feet of the 
passers to and fro, the bottom of the car was a pool of 
water. Like others, probably, who had not foreseen this, 
I was not provided with India rubbers, and of course sat 
with damp feet all the way — a dangerous addition to an 
empty stomach and a pestilent atmosphere. Ah, Messrs. 
Presidents and Directors of railways, is it not possible to 
have the ventilation of cars independent of those who do 
not know the meaning of fresh air. 

We arrived at Thirty-first street in the neighborhood 
of eleven o'clock ; but, as no announcement was made of 
that happy fact, we sat fifteen or twenty minutes in the 



TERMINATION AND D E - T K R M I N A T I N . 32'7 

cars, wasting our resignation on a supposed snow-bank. 
With the discovery that the snow in the streets would 
prevent the cars from going farther, and that the baggage 
had so accumulated with the numerous trains that it 
could not be delivered till morning, the next query was 
how to travel the three miles to our various homes and 
hotels in the city. There was one four-horse sleigh in 
waiting, and probably between five and eight hundred 
passengers. Not sorry, myself, to stir ray blood with a 
walk for that distance before taking my lungs to bed, I 
gave ray check to an Express agent (who brought my 
trunk to me at seven the next evening), and, with hun- 
dreds of men, women and children, started down-town- 
wards. With a long stumble over the unshovelled side- 
walks of slumbering and ill-lighted suburbs, I found my- 
self, towards midnight, in the neighborhood of Union 
Square, and, over a venison steak which I found smoking 
on the supper-table at the Clarendon, vowed never again 
to make even a two-hours' pilgrimage in a rail-car without 
provision against accident — say a cracker or two and 
some shape of fluid consolation. 



328 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD 



LETTER XLIX. 

Frst Signs of Spring — A Public of Invalids — An Invalid Chronicle — Letter from 
a Lady— Our Friend S.— Beauty of Old Age, &c., &c. 

Jlarch, IS, 1S54. 

The Hudson has thrown off liis overcoat of ice, and 
offers the welcome of a bare breast to the winds of 
Spring — and Spring it has been, for this first week of 
March, sunny and soft, and (wherever the mud could be 
forgotten) beautiful. The Storm King's shoulders, it is 
true, still show the chinchili edge of his mantle of firs and 
snow, and there is a swan's-down tippet, here and there, 
on the lap of a Korth-looking hill ; but, in corners, where 
you can get away from the Winds, and be alone with the 
caressing Sun, it is as sweet a courtship of Summer as 
any reasonable anticipation could desire. I have a seat 
in a niche of rock, between two precipices which come 
together as if to shut in the " due South ;" and here I 
could have sat, with the most shrinkingly delicate of my 
many "invalid" correspondents, and gossiped away any 
noon since the opening of March, with our respective 
coughs fast asleep in their cradles. The winds are doubly 



AN INVALID CHRONICLE. 329 

excluded by the tall hemlocks overhanging the cliffs 
above ; and the rushing cascade, which plunges a hundred 
feet in its two or three leaps below, makes a lullaby that 
would drown a cough if it did not help to still it ; so, 
come to Idlewild, dear co-Pulmonaries, and, in the sunny 
seat under the rock, chat or muse — the evergreen woods 
shutting you in with foliage like the curtains of Summer, 
and Winter's forgiven Out-doors taken kindly to your 
bosom. 

That the Invalids, in our climate, amount to a 
" Public " — a Public on which " a paper might be 
started," to use a very definite phrase — I have a daily 
increasing conviction. There is a pulse of popular feeling 
which every editor has, in his correspondence ; and mine, 
on this subject, beats more and more strongly. Of medical 
books there is no end, it is true ; and you would sujopose, 
at a first glance, that they must be all that an invalid 
could require ; but no — it is the patient, not the doctor, 
they want to talk with. Under every "Public" must 
run a nerve of common sympathy. And (besides its not 
having fellow-feeling enough for a large edition) every 
medical book is but a single theory, if not an old and 
disputed one. The experiences of yesterday, with the 
narrator's own life interested in the question, and no 
'pathy-bigotry, are what is thirsted for. Every sufferer's 
case is, in some respects, peculiar ; and more is learned 



330 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I L D . 

by comparison of symptoms and treatment, than by clas- 
sified medical reports — each patient capable of becoming, 
by the exercise of good judgment and careful observation, 
a better judge of his own condition than most doctors. 
In the lack of " hubs " for the social wheels of a city, I 
wonder no one has ever thought of starting an invalid 
coii'cersazione. 

But, one of my anonymous correspondents suggests an 
additional element of popularity in a chronicle for invalids 
— no less than the pleasure taken by the gentler sex in 
reading of that condition in which man is dependent on 
their care. Thus writes a lady, in reply to a paragraph 
in the Home Journal, as to the objections to such 
articles : — 

" I am sure, I cannot see why any one objects to your holding a 
weekly chat with your invalid friends. I will not flatter you by 
saying how you make them look in print ; but, to me, sick folks 
are always interesting, in reality ; especially you * lords of crea- 
tion.' To see you stripped of all the might and majesty that 
make the glorious difiference, and compelled to acknowledge you 
are very poor creatures without our aid ! What can be more 
elating than the sight of an indifferent one, who has been looking 
down on us so long, being made to elevate his eyebrows, and sue 
humbly for a little toast and tea ? But, really, every one is more 
loveable sick than well. If I were a novel-writer, I should cer- 
tainly make all my characters sick once, at least, in the work. 
Some few authors do seem to understand this weakness in our sex 



THE VENERABLE NEIGHBOR. 331 

The very anxiety one feels for a poor fellow, endears him to us, no 
matter how slight his hold on our affections, when glorying ia" 
his strength. Talk on, then, with your sick, and let those object 
who never were, and are sure they never will be. I shall not, 
for fear I should be laid on the shelf some time myself. I write 
this because your valued hints to consumptives have been blessed 
to one I love, and I could not refrain from thanking you for 
them. M." 

Well, — it shall be a side aim, in these " Out-door " chro- 
nicles (if you please, ladies !), to show what there is 
interesting hereabouts, to Invalid readers more particu- 
larly. The Highlands are a Hygeian home — the lap of 
the goddess herself — and, of a health-seeking life, here, the 
details may be valued as information for the sufferer, 
whether amusing to the general reader or no. To robust- 
dom we will minister, in turn. 

Spring's most dignified and beautiful return, at 
Idlewild, has been with us, to-day — our venerable 
neighbor, of eighty years of age, whose white locks, and 
face with the benignity of a Summer's evening, came back 
with the first softening of the season. He goes to the 
city — this beloved neighbor of ours — when the roads 
become impassable for his tremulous feet ; but he gains 
health (as he was saying with his usual truthful wisdom 
to-day), not alone from the sidewalks and other opportu- 
nities of exercise. In the mental '' change of air " he finds, 



332 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

an invigoratiDg touic — (one, by the way, which I am glad 
of this bright example to assist iu recommending to the 
dispirited invalid, for there is more medicine in it than 
would be believed, without trial) — and he inhales it in the 
larger field that he finds for the instructive benevolence 
which forms his occupation in the country. He passes his 
time in the city in visiting schools, hospitals, prisons — 
every place where human love and wisdom would look in 
together. He speaks fluently. His voice is singularly 
sweet and winning ; and with his genial and beautiful 
expression of countenance, his fine features, and the 
venerable dignity of his bent form in its Quaker garb, he 
is listened to with exceeding interest. Children, particu- 
larly, delight to hang on his words. One great charm, 
perhaps, is his singular retention of creativeness of mind 
— though so old, still continuing to talk as he newly 
thinks, not as he only remembers. The circumstances of 
the moment therefore suffice for a theme, or for the 
attractive woof on which to broider instruction ; and he 
does it with a mingling playfulness and earnestness which 
form a most attractive as well as valuable lesson. Can 
any price be put on such an old man, as the belonging 
of a neighborhood ? Can landscape gardening invent 
anything more beautiful than such a form daily seen 
coming through an avenue of trees, his white locks 
waving in the wind, and the children running out to m.eet 



BEAUTY OF OLD AGE. 333 

him with delight ? Friend S strolls to Idlewild, on 

any sunny day, and joins us at any meal, or lies down to 
sleep or rest on a sofa in the library — and, can painting 
or statuary give us any semblance, more hallowing to the 
look and character of a home, more cheering and dignify- 
ing to its atmosphere and society ? Among the Arts — 
among the refinements of taste — in the culture of Beauty, 
in America — let us give Old Age its preeminence ! The 
best arm-chair by the fireside, the privileged room with its 
warmest curtains and freshest flowers, the preference and 
first place in all groups and scenes in with Age can 
mingle — such is the proper frame and setting for this 
priceless picture in a home. With less slavery to 
business, and better knowledge and care of health, we shall 
have more Old Age in our country — in other words, for 
our homes there will be more of the most crowning 
beauty. 



334 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 



LETTER L. 

Breaking up of the River-ice — Dates of previous Resumings of Navigation — 
Companionship in the distant Views of Travel — Nature's DInesses — Hill- 
sides, &c., &c. 

March 25, 1854. 

The most stirring bit of news, probably, in the whole 
year, for this neighborhood, is the breaking up of the 
ice at the mountain-lock, at West Point, and the passing 
of the first steamer through. " A boat up yesterday " 
(March 9) is this morning's anu.ouncement of suspended 
life re-begun. Our dock is once more noisy and lively, 
like returning voice and color to the Highland lip ; and 
the wagons begin to come and go on the branching roads, 
like blood that has again found circulation in the veins. 
The trance is over. We shake hands with the city again, 
and resume our suburban interchanges and daily com- 
merce, to and fro. 

But, from a solid valley to a flowing river, the change 
is large. The rippled surface of the Hudson flows, now, 
where I was watching a trotting race of eight or ten sleighs 
but a few days ago. The manly boys of my neighbor 



STATISTICS OF RIVER-CLOSINGS 



135 



Roe's school-family skated to Newburgli, it hardly seems 
farther off than yesterday, aud, to-day, the sloop-prows 
are jiloughing ou the track of their skate-irons. We 
could take a walk where now we must take a boat. The 
liills opposite were apparently across a two-mile meadow — 
they arc now acress a two-mile river. For the familiar 
landscape seen from the window of one's home, this is a 
startling variation. 

The river has been closed this year for sixty-two days. 
It may be interesting to record the length of a few pre- 
vious shuttings-up, as given in a little table by the Al- 
bany Argus — the dates of the closing of the river and 
the number of days navigation was suspended : 



1842, November 29 

1843, December 9 

1844, do. 11 
do. 
do. 
do. 
do. 
do. 
do. 
do. 



1845, 
1846, 
1847, 
1848, 
1849, 
1850, 
1851, 



4 
15 
24 
27 
25 
17 
11 



. closed 136 days. 
. do. 95 do. 
. do. 74 do. 
. do. 100 do. 
. do. 112 do. 

89 do. 

82 do. 

73 do. 

70 do. 
105 do. 



do. 
do. 
do. 
do. 
do. 



It is curious how the mere visihleness of event and mul- 
titude— i\iQ distant view of perpetually passmg fleets of 
sails and steamers with which one has no communication 



336 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

— breaks up the solitude of the country. It makes the 
difference (duly priced in the acre) between living on the 
river and away from it. The beauty of the view is of 
less value than the co??ipanionship there is in it. I find 
the eye can take in the needed food for this social craving. 
At my window, on this terrace of the Highlands, I some- 
times look off, from a tired pen, upon the fleets of sails, 
crowded steamers and lines of tow-boats and barges, and 
feel, after a minute or two, as if I had been where people 
are. It does not need question and reply to exchange 
magnetism with others, nor does it need nearer neighbor- 
hood, I fancy, than the distance to which the eye can ever 
so indistinctly, follow the imagination. Many a traveller 
up the Hudson hag helped to break the solitude of Idle- 
wild, by what he gave to my thought — the thought that 
went to him as he passed, and came back from him to me. 
But I must not undervalue the human voice — startled 
as I was this morning by the first Spring addition of my 
children's voices to the brook-music of the glen. With 
the ice on the hanging paths of our precipitous rocks, 
those little feet were not to be trusted with full liberty 
till the sides of the ravine should be bare ground, at 
least ; but yesterday's west wind, after the soft coming 
in of March, took off the embargo. ]S'ever was change 
of season more joyously welcomed. Leave to trace up 
the bright windings of Fuunychild brook, for play, and 



IDLE WILD BROOK, 337 

climb along the sides of the wild torrent of Idlewild, for 
wonder— the two streams, from their two separate glens, 
meeting in the meadow with a hemlock-sheltered lawn 
between such as fairies w^ould choose to dance ui->on— was 
liberty indeed. More varied play-ground could scarcely 
be contrived, yet all shut in with crags and woods full 
of echoes. And the change this makes, in the music 
that is never still for us with these swollen torrents- 
words and laughter added to the voiceless voluntary, 
which, in every room of our cottage above, is, day and 
night, audible ! It is a long-played accompaniment that 
has at last started into a son? 

With an invalid's eye, one symptom-izes beauty, more or 
less, even in Xature. In our poetic days of youth and 
health, we fall in love with a consumptive cheek, without a 
thought of its needing health to be more beautiful. Idle- 
wild brook now, swollen to a resistless cataract in the glen, 
seems to be glorious, most of all, for its defying health— 
so fearless of winter, so uuimprisonable by ice, so louder 
and brighter for snow and rain. It triumphs in strength' 
while the trees and flowers waste and fade — though one 
envies it less by remembering, that, in its turn, it will 
'' sing small " while trees and flowers bloom and brighten. 
There is comfort in the thought that it is not in Nature to 
be always strong. She has her " ups and downs," with- 
out sins of diet or irregularity. ^ nd I am not sure that 

15 



338 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

the souVs flood does not strengthen, like this brook in 
winter, while the hody's summer gives place to weakness 
and decay. It may be Nature's alternating law— the 
mind-freshets, which are part of it, being well-needed to 
sweep away the cloggings-up and incumbrances of health's 
careless season. 

^ :at * * * * 

Many a strange thing may pass by a man's windows ; 
and we should not too readily take an impression that the 
world has come to an end. One of our neighbors, last 
Saturday noon, however, might reasonably have relin- 
quished for a moment his moral appetite for the dinner 
cooking before him — no less a passenger than a neighbor- 
ing hill crossing the road, as he stood in his kitchen ; and, 
after a leisurely glide, along what was almost a level of 
three hundred feet, stopping and standing like any other 
hill, on the bank of the river ! His house was a new one, 
of two stories ; and if its foundations had been laid but a 
few feet farther north, it would have been swept under, 
with all his women and children, like a crushed band-box. 
It will be understood of course, that this was a slide of a 
clay-bank, occasioned by the excavations for brick-mak- 
ing ; but, even in the history of "slides" (one or two 
remarkable and fatal ones having occurred at Troy, some 
years since, it will be remembered), this will probably 
rank as the most remarkable. A train of cars would 



A LAxXD-SLIDE. 339 

hardly make the same descent of three hundred feet by 
their own weight on a rail-road. From the base of tlie 
old digging to the present site of the removed hill, it not 
only looks to be a long level, but the public road, from 
Newburgh to Cornwall, offered a barrier of perhaps eigh- 
teen inches of elevation. At present, the tail of the slide 
lies across this turnpike, to the height of about twelve 
feet, and the interrupted travel is sent around by a back 
road. 

My first inquiry, naturally, as a humane neighbor, 
was of the peril to life ; for it had been a scene of busy 
industry, with teams and workmen so close under the 
base, that twenty men and their horses might easily have 
been swallowed up. But it was, providentially, a rainy' 
day, of suspended work ; and not even a passing traveller 
(who would also have run a very great risk) was on the 
road at the moment. The coachman of one of our neigh- 
bors had the only narrow escape, having just jDassed, and 
being only astounded at the noise of the crashing of the 
tall trees torn from the fields above. But my next feel- 
ing, I confess, was rather a rejoicing in the righteous 
judgment of the supposed damage — for these brick-yard 
diggings had been the disfiguring of one of the most 
lovely spots on the shore of the Hr.dson. It was a cresent 
bay, with a smooth beach of sand ; and the mountainous 
shore, followhig its shape, was a half-vase of natural 



340 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

lawn, shaded with noble cedars — a river frontage for a 
villa, such as a man could not get shaped and shaded in a 
life-time. To see these un-restorable and beautiful trees 
hewn ruthlessly down, and the green slopes torn open for 
clay-pits, had been a discord in the music of my daily 
ride along the river. I say I rather rejoiced in the 
calamity's happening to Mr. Umlerkill, the brick-maker 
— (willing only to be humanely pleased that his name did 
not express his bodily share in it). But I was a little too 
fast. Nature, with Christian " turning of the other 
cheek also," was helping rather than punishing her 
defacers. The job to fill up the new dock, into the centre 
of which slid the hill, was to be done by men and carts, 
under contract, for a thousand dollars. The teams and 
pickaxes had made a beginning ; but (like the squirrel 
who begged the Kentucky rifleman not to waste his 
powder, for he knew his skill, and would come downj, the 
obliging hill walked across the road and " dumped " itself, 
just where it was wanted. Never was a greater saving 
of cartage — the Spirit of Beauty unavenged notwith- 
standins*. 

*' Three inches of declivity to a mile" (they say of river 
courses) '' gives a velocity of three miles in the hour to 
the stream ; and the great river Magdalena, in South 
America, runs a thousand miles, with a fall of only five 
hundred feet in all that distance. But, I suppose that a 



THE LESSON DEDUCED. 341 

high hill, resting ou a bed of blue clay, moistened by 
springs, would descend with quite as facile a celerity — 
obstacles once removed. The pickaxes of those Irish 
laborers had probably taken away the sand and gravel 
that alone blocked up the hill which stood on this slippery 
plane ; and, with a throe of the heaving frost (which 
farmers know to be so repulsive), it took its start. From 
its look of durability, however, almost any lover of a fine 
view might have built his cottage on the summit ; and he 
would thus have found his home suddenly changed into a 
projectile, in a way to entitle him to some astonishment. 
We should look to see what bases we build upon. 



342 LETTERS F R ^I 1 D L E W I L D . 



LETTER LI. 

Weather-wise Squirrels — Eflfect of Spring Winds on Roads — Dodge of Turnpike 
Companies — Anecdote of a Teamster's Revenge — The Kings in Republics — 
Road from Newburgh to West Point, Ac, &c. 

AjyHl 1, 1854. 

The cliipping-squirrels were right about it. They 
never appear till the last ''cold snap" is over ; and not^ 
withstanding seventeen days of most insinuating summer 
weather (since the first of March), they have let the more 
sanguine blue-birds have it all to themselves. On the 
sixteenth, the oppressive sultriness of the weather brought 
out myriads of musquitoes in our meadows ; but, to-day 
— the eighteenth — a cold and sharp northern gale is lash- 
ing the trees about, like whips, and the sagacious squir- 
rels are well off in their holes, with last year's nuts on 
hand, and their little ones not started in too much of a 
hurry to seek their fortunes. 

This furious wind, blowing under a brilliant sun, will 
help to dry up our roads, however — to the undeserved 
profit of the Turnpike Company, I am sorry to say, who, 
with roads thus made passable by a wind that costs 



NO TOLL NO RESPONSIBILITY. 343 

nothing, will be entitled once more to close gates and 
take toll. Oil, the nice little chartered " dodge " there is 
in that "liberal arrangement" of taking no toll when 
the roads are very bad ! Of course there is no responsi- 
bility when no toll is taken. No complaint can be made ; 
no Inspector can be called out, at the expense of five dol- 
lars to the Company ; and (there being no Inspector's 
report for a compulsion), of course, there need be no 
mending of the roads till the sun and wind take the job 
off their hands. How full our free Republic is of kings 
in small pieces ! "What a regiment of Czars could be 
mustered out of the collected fragments of tyrants, 
snugly hidden under Companies and PubKc Ofiices, all 
over our land of liberty ! 

But, now and then, a splinter of the American mon- 
arch's divided sceptre pricks a republican finger, and is 
enough rebelled against to require to be shaved down a 
little. I can illustrate it, perhaps, by a very small and 
common country circumstance — a subject of viUage gossip 
hereabouts not long ago. 

One of our back-woods farmers, who comes down from 
the mountains with lumber and fire-wood when the farm- 
work is suspended (just when the roads are at the worst, 
unfortunately), had been in the habit of fretting some- 
what over the payment of a toll — the most of the dis- 
tance he had to travel being upon the district roads, and 



844 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

this one toll-gate covering a very small portion of his 
route, as well as its heaviest and worst wheeling. It was 
paying a tax for a worse road than there would be if 
there were no turnpike at all ; and, with his reluctant 
pennies. Farmer A. paid out usually some expression of 
his sentiments. This lored a cool state of feeling, very 
naturally, between him and toll-keeper B. So, seeing 
him come down the mountain with a heavy load, one day, 
when the gate had been open from the bad condition of the 
road, B. ran out and closed his gate, determined to vex his 
neighbor by exercising his discretionary power of demand- 
ing a toll. A. came along ; and, at first, refused to pay, 
and made a demonstration of opening the gate by force. 
But the quiet reminder by B, that the fine of that luxury 
was twenty-five dollars, made him think better of it, and 
he paid the toll and drove on. 

The Christian resignation of farmer A. was not pro- 
moted by his experience of the turnpike privilege for 
which he had just paid. The sloughs and mire-pits were 
deep and desperate ; and, in one of them, his struggling 
and plunging team fairly stuck, and he was obliged to 
call help, and pry out with rails, after unloading. This 
raised his temper to the peg above caring for cost ; and, 
on his arrival at the village, late and tired, he made 
straight for a lawyer. To his furiously-told story, of the 
state of the turnpike, the lawyer listened, but shook his 



PAYING F R-^^ N LISA X C E . 345 

head discouragingly — knowing the slender chance of 
the individual against incorporated companies — till A. 
chanced to mention, last and incidentally, that the gate 
had taken toll from him on that day. Here was a ray of 
hope. The Company's usual dodge had been incautiously 
forgotten by toll-keeper B, The toll having been taken, 
the turnpike was responsible for the state of the road at 
that particular time. A complaint could be forwarded — 
the Inspector could be called out — the tyrannical Com- 
pany could be made to pay, at least five dollars, besides 
mending the road at one particular slough. So A. had 
his one-vote-sized revenge — the getting a chance to crow, 
once, over the Turnpike Company, as an oflfset to paying 
forty years of toll. 

The lurking vanity of power over neighbors is the only 
secret of the continuance of this nuisance. The stock- 
holders do not make a cent by it, but they are still 
" stockholders " — and, to see a toll paid to tkeir gate is 
to be able to imagine themselves the rulers of the country 
round about. But turnpikes are incorporated only to keep 
thoroughfares open till the inhabitants can afford to do it 
by gratuitous labor ; and the free " district roads " (which 
are all the other highways) arc, at present, so much 
better kept than our turnpike, that the latter is simply a 
nuisance for which we have to pay. The stockholders 
should throw up their profitless charter, and let us dis- 

15* 



346 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

trict the route, and keep " decent going " for the traveller, 
and without charge. But, no ! — they would not then be 
'' stockholders." And so (as my lesser-anxiety man 
expresses himself) we must " connive and worry along," 
till public opinion compel our disguised monarch to 
abandon this for some other shape of power. 

Along the river — with the land highly-priced for orna- 
mental residences — the state of road-civilization is, of 
course, an epoch in advance of the back-country turnpike. 
From Idlewild to JSTewbiirgh it is one of the smoothest, 
as well as most romantically beautiful, of drives, for the 
greater part of the year — thanks to our wealthy and 
liberal neighbor, path-master Miller, for the best kept por- 
tion of it. And this is to be a thronged and fashionable 
avenue, by the improvement now busily canvassed. 
Idlewild is soon to be the half-way mark in an eight- 
mile drive along the river from Newburgh to West Point. 
Oh, the tempting trip it will be — a trot through the 
Highland gorge of the Hudson, when the hills throw the 
afternoon shade upon the road, to see the parades of 
the Cadets and hear the military bands — the crowds of 
summer visitors, at the thronged hotels at both ends of 
the drive, thus meeting for a sunset promenade, on a spot 
where, of all the world, the sunset seems most lovely. 
But, though Fashion and Gaiety are to use the road. 
Utility will build it. West Point wants access to the 



IMPROVEMENTS CONTEMPLATED. Ml 

Newburgh market. That thriving town, with its twelve 
thousand inhabitants and its streets of city-like shops and 
provision-stalls, is quite too provokingly near the mili- 
tary village and its hotels, uot to have a thoroughfare 
between. The Storm-King's granite-wall blocks up the 
way, at present— his mountain precipice rising bare from 
the deep water of the Hudson— but this can be soon 
shelved around with money and powder, and the remain- 
ing part of the distance is but easy shaping of the shore 
The spot where, as Drake says, 

'■' The moon looks down on old Cro'nest, 
And mellows the shades on his shaggy breast," 

and all the fairy scenes of the Culprit Fay's romance of 
love and its trials, will be two miles down the river from 
Idlewild. 



348 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 



LETTER LII. 

Deceptive Grass-Patch— Whj Northerners love Home— Tragedy and Turkey- 
cock — Suspicion of Neighborhood and Vindication — Don Quixote, the New- 
foundland Dog— Flippertigibbet, the Terrier— My Mare and her Illness, &c. 

April 8, 1S54. 

The donkey persuasion, which I saw practised in the 
streets of Havana, has been very like my own out-door 
experience for the week past. The poor animal, har- 
nessed to an over-loaded dray, was tempted onwards per- 
petually, with a tuft of green cornstalks kept just ahead 
of him by a negro-boy on a trot — constant disappoint- 
ment, apparently, never lessening the charm of the illu- 
sory promise. With cough and hemorrhage getting 
quite ahead of me, of late, I have looked across the 
wintry valley, from my window, and rested a feverish 
eye on a half acre of bright green grass, the perennial 
verdure of which is kept up by a living spring on the 
hill-side above. March's last two weeks have been down- 
right January, with the addition of unmoderating winds ; 
but — that tempting grass-patch vowing it was April out 
of doors — I have every day taken its word for it, and 



HOME INCIDENTS ENHANCED. 349 

every day galloped off to the hills ia a disappointed search 
after Spring. Here we are, with the month for violets 
close upon us ; and, across some new ice, on a mill-pond, 
yesterday, I saw a man safely walk with a load of rails 
upon his shoulder ! One's lungs and one's hope for 
Summer need the faith of a Cuban donkey, in such a 
season.* 

With an inclement world beyond the fence, the inte- 
rest upon the lesser world within is l3rought to a focus — 
and hence the reason, perhaps, why home thrives at the 
chilHng North, but is a blessing unknown in climes of 
tropical luxuriousness. The thoughts, driven in from a 
forbidding horizon, nestle around threshold and hearth. 
In our out-doors family at Idlewild, the events, of late, 
have thus been magnified in importance ; though, of one 
small tragedy, involving the character of the neighbor- 
hood, I think I should have made historical mention 
even with a milder Spring — a removal of unjust sus- 
picion being properly a matter above dependence on the 
weather. 

For some months, this winter, we have had our pomp 
and glory performed for us by the largest turkey-cock 

* A paper of the 18th of March, says : 

" Smiles and Tears.— At New Haven, on Thursday and Friday last, the cro- 
cuses were in bloom. On the Sunday following, early in the morning, the 
mercury stood at only sixteen degrees above zero." 



350 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

that could be found in North Carolina — a present from 
that distant region to show us what could come of unre- 
stricted hominy and polygamy. Two of his wives (widows 
at present) accompanied the Sultan ; and, really, as he 
stalked through the pine-grove in the rear of the house, 
spreading his neck-ruff and his enormous halo of a tail, 
with his own and a new-added Fatima's around him, 
it was the poultry (if not the poetry) of the Arabian 
Nights. He neither walked like other turkeys, nor 
would he lodge as they; but, retiring to the outermost 
of our largest hemlocks, overlooking the torrent of the 
glen, he nightly veiled his majesty in the impervious 
darkness of the branches — by this haughty separation 
from barn-door-fowl-dom (as it afterwards befellj sealing 
his melancholy fate. 

He disappeared. 

Now, the Sultan had been an object of much surround- 
ing curiosity. Living with open grounds — inviting our 
humblest neighbors to make free with our wood-paths 
and gravel-walks — we have largely promulged his plump- 
titude and glory, even catching and weighing him, to 
ascertain the extent of the avoirdupois portion of his 
greatness, and telling all comers of his one-and-twenty 
mortal pounds, superfluities included. At his sudden 
disappearance, suspicion, with its usual injustice, made 
some random surmises. The winter resources of the 



A NEW ACTOR IN T II D U C E D . 35 ] 

poor were getting low, particiilarly with the wholly sus- 
pended labor of the brick-yards. Turkey had tempted a 
Czar. Human forbearance, with such a morsel within its 
reach, had its limits. I attributed the theft myself, 
however, to some of the straggling beggars who "squat" 
in the mountains occasionally and change their neighbor- 
hood as they find it necessary. Of the honesty and good 
will of the poor around us, I was made too sure by the 
friendly greetings on the road — to say nothing of the 
better assurance, that, for years, no theft had been heard 
of in the neighborhood. 

But now a quadruped member of our out-door family 
becomes an actor in the romance. 

One of my neighbors of whom I see the most — an 
uneducated and working-man, but a great reader and a 
very original and energetic thinker — is, in the way of his 
business, a good deal about in the country ; and he keeps 
me " booked up " in much that I wish to know, as to the 
haunts of scenery, the progress of improvements, the 
culture of fruits, crops, etc., etc. But my friend Chat- 
field lately returned from an excursion, with an account 
of a great beauty that he had seen in the way of a dog — 
a dog which, in his kind partiality for us, he thought quite 
too beautiful for any home but Idlewild. Enough said. 
The farmer in the backwoods readily parted with a 
" critter that ate as much as a man," and down he came 



352 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

— a Newfoundland pup, of glossy and raven blackness, 
joyous and buoyant as a bird, and almost as big as 
a pony. So excessively handsome was he, that there 
was a general acclamation to call him Count D'Orsay — • 
but, as, in passing the mill of our neighbor Clark, he had 
burst open the door, dashed in, and made a furious 
onslaught upon the water-wheel, to the imminent peril of 
his life, I thought there was another celebrity he was 
more like ; and he now goes by the name of Don Quixote 
— "Don" for shortness. 

To introduce the new Idlewildian to his water privi- 
leges — the large pond in the glen with the cascades 
above and below it — was the politic first thing, of course, 
in the way of endearing the new home to his Newfound- 
landness. And prompt was his appreciation of it ; for, 
with the cold almost at zero, he bounded in and out of 
the torrent, and swam through the openings of the ice, 
as comfortable, on coming out, apparently, with the 
crystals instantly forming on every hair of his shaggy 
coat, as a gentleman in a vapor-bath with the dew on 
his beard. Through pools and rapids, and around over 
every crag and precipice, he bounded, swam and 
scrambled, to the infinite delight and admiration of the 
children ; till — of a sudden — there was a new wonder with 
a tale to it. The Don had come upon a skeleton, well 
picked of every particle of meat, but with the extremities 



% 

THE REPROACH REMOVED. 353 

perfect in their places — the well-known head and legs of 
the missing Sultan ! It was quite clear. Human diges- 
tion was not to answer for him. The same fox that had 
carried off our two white rabbits — the traditional pest of 
the glen — had found courage to climb to the hemlock 
perch of the solitary turkey^ and slay and drag him to 
his fastness among the rocks — picking his plump carcass 
with a comi^leteness unattainable by human tooth and 
nail. The neighborhood stood free of reproach. We 
felt once more encircled by the precious atmosphere of 
love and protection-^thanks to the vindicatory discovery 
of Don Quixote. 

I shall not make the Home Journal of this week 
acceptable in our play-room, however, without a tribute 
to another dog, added to this glorification of the Don — a 
long-loved play-fellow, banished with many tears on the 
day of the new arrival. Flippertigibbet had an incurable 
fault. He was a smooth terrier, of a choice breed, 
imported by our friend of Wodenethe, across the river — 
but though this is said to be the most intelhgent kind of 
dog in the world, Flip could not be broken of a trick of 
seizing a strange horse by the fetlock. Delightfully good- 
tempered with the children, gentle to the kittens and 
rabbits, and patient of letting bipeds have their wilful 
way in everything, he still was most dangerous to the 
horses of visitors. Go, he must. Our friends of the 



354 L E T T K R S FROM I D L E W I L D . 

paper-mill at Mootlna had often begged him. Idlewild 
was for his idling no more. And the children must walk to 
the place of banishment with their long-loved playmate, 
and see him tied up, and leave him. Ah, it was bitter 
-^ork — chokings and sobbings — and the new dog, splendid 
as he was, almost hated for taking his place. And the 
daily tease, ever since, is for permission to go over to 
Moodnfl, and see Flip. They will never love another dog 
as well — my boy says he means never to — never ! So 
begin partings and sorrows ! Will the heart ache more, 
for more poetic ones, by and by ? 

But there is another sympathy awake, in our out-doors 
interests just now — mentionable from its incidental bear- 
ino: on the kind of horseback exercise which I have 
ventured to declare preferable to invalids. My favorite 
mare, during my recent visit to the city (from grief at her 
master's absence, I should like to say, but, probably from 
interrupted habits of work) was seized with what the 
veterinary surgeon calls a colic. This, in a horse, the 
reader may be aware, is not a trifling matter, within 
paregoric reach, but a fit of dangerous sickness ; and 
Lady Jane's stomach-ache was near ending in inflamma- 
tion and death — reducing her, as it was, to a very invalid 
condition, and a cough almost as obstinate as her 
master's. With my partial recovery, which I have fonnd 
altogether on her back, and daily hours of companionship 



N K W .s \ I r A i ii S A \V A K K S E D . 355 

with her for almost two years (as spirited and fine-stniug 
a creature, besides, as ever was a part of a man's being) 
I have vibrated, to this cough under my saddle, with 
more regret thau to my own cough above it, unable, at 
present, to do more than give her a daily airing in the 
sunshine. Her pace — the truest and most elastic of trots 
— was necessary to my convenience, however — the more 
showy, but far too easy gallop of Archy, my wife's 
pallV4|r, bringing me home from a long ride as uncJiumcd 
as milk sent to market in a spring-wagon. I shall be 
better for the flaxseed and bran ftiash Lady Jane is 
taking, no doubt — but that cough of hers must be 
softened l)efore my lungs are easy. I should not live 
long with a canttr among my complaints — I here record, 
as a conviction of my experience which may, perhaps, 
nscfully guide an invalid in the purchase of a horse. 



356 LETTERS FKOM IDLE WILD. 



LETTER LIII. 

Cedar-Trees and their Secrets— Bird-Presence about Home— Om- Niglit-Owl— A 
Bird's Claim on Ilospitality— Difference between City and Country Influences- 
Death in a Neiglibor's House, &c., &c. # 

April 15, nU. 

We are in a dilemma wliicli Professor Mapes might 
instructively give us a word upon in liis journal. What 
seems to be an eccentricity in the production of the cedar- 
tree from seed, stands in the way of a little of my Spring 
work. Our Highland Terrace, as every one will remem- 
ber who has threaded the winding roads of its beautiful 
ten miles square, is studded thickly with noble cedars 
wherever they are permitted to grow — but, along the 
stone walls, particularly at the sides of the road, they 
form avenues of evergreen luxuriousness which strike the 
stranger as the careful design of arboriculture, rather 
than any accident of growth. With our long stretches 
of new walls built under the sides of the precipitous glen 
roads of Idlewild, and sustaining our terraces and slopes, 
I could not afford the transplanted cedar hedge which the 
soil would easiest nourish for wall support, and which 



STRANGE IF TRUE. o5t 

good taste would dictate for their concealment and embel- 
lishment ; but, with time and patience, I thought we 
could produce the thrifty evergreens from the seed, and 
decided to sow them in the present April. 

Of my friends, the road-side boys, with whom I sedu- 
lously cultivate an intercourse by the purchase of their 
various game, plunder and commodities — (gold-fish and 
slippery-elm, wild ducks, rabbits, and sassafras, and such 
other matters as employ the unschooled urchin's industry 
of idleness) — of these my ragged acquaintances on the 
highway I had bespoken the cedar-berries, early in March. 
They must be early taken from the tree. The birds eat 
them off in a very few days after their Spring arrival 
from the South. So, between the seed's coming to matu- 
rity, and the birds snatching it away, my little harvesters 
were to beat the trees with long poles (and one of their 
mothers' coverlets spread beneath), and bring me the 
gatherings— a shilling a quart— for the shade trees of the 
next generation. 

E-ejoicing over two large urns full of the berries, I was 
waiting for the first April rain to lay them in their 
trenches, when our venerable neighbor S. came in, v/ith 
the damper which I have to submit to the kind considera- 
tion of Professor Mapes. He tells me that the cedar 
berry must pass through the body of a bird — exemplified 
by the lines of cedars that spring up along the walls and 



358 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

under the rocks and trees where the birds perch them- 
selves. The seed thus auto-guano-fies for fructification ; 
or, rather, it is entrusted by un-laborious Mature, to be 
picked from the tree, manured, and sown at a distance, 
by a troop of her apparent idlers. That cedars are thus 
scattered and propagated, there is no doubt. But is the 
bird an indispensable medium ? Or, could we dispense 
with him by substituting a little boiling water for the 
animal heat, and a little guano (which is bird-manure) 
for the digestive fertilizing ? Tliis is a more important 
question from the difficulty of transplanting the cedar. 
It is the most unlikely of trees to live after being dis- 
turbed. If we can neither transplant nor plant cedars, 
therefore, but must trust altogether to bird-sowing, it is 
time we were catching orioles and blue jays and teaching 
them habits of regularity. We like to choose where we 
will have their amiable besto wings of shade-trees. 

I am sometimes a little superstitious about birds, not- 
withstanding this matter-of-fact view of their transmigra- 
tory uses. Now and then a bird has a 'presence of which 
I cannot but feel conscious — like the presence of another 
human being. We have had, for a year past, in the 
grove of hemlocks just under the library window, a 
night-owl, of most musical, but, at the same time, most 
melancholy note, and the members of our family know 
his song as well as one of the household voices. He is 



A BIRD VISIT. 359 

t 

still, duriug tlie clay, aucl bis haunt of evergreen trees 
being on tlie side of the precipice over which the cottage 
is built, he is inaccessible and generally invisible. I have 
seen him but once — one winter twilight when he happened 
to have perched on a leafless tree — fearless, motionless, 
and solemn enough ! My man Bell, whom I called to 
look at him, was eager to seize the opportunity to shoot 
him. But there is mournfulness without boding of ill- 
will, in his music, to my ear, and, though it sometimes 
startles me when it breaks in upon a waking dream at 
night, I have grown to find company in it — a change 
from the other and more joyous music of the day. I 
would not have him killed. He may have an errand to 
sadden down thought to things that were, else, less often 
remembered. 

Last night, however, we had a bird-visit which has 
furnished quite a day of poetry for the children. Writ- 
ing in my own room at a late hour, I was interrupted by 
a sudden flutter of wings against the window, which, at 
first, I thought an accident of some bird startled from her 
nest and bewildered by the light. I looked out but could 
see nothing. The night was dark and stormy ; and 
wishing the flutterer safe from all perils of foxes and tree- 
toads, I resumed my pen. In a few minutes the attempt 
to enter was made again, and repeated upon the larger 
window of the adjoining room, in which slept my infant 



360 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I L D . 

in her cradle. The nurse raised the kittice, and in came 
the stranger — circUng around and around the cradle, and 
at last alighting upon the curtains of the bed — a little 
gray harbinger of Spring, who sat and looked about her 
with the confidence of one sure of a welcome. She 
alighted presently on the Ottoman in the window, and 
was easily caught by the hand and put under an open- 
braided basket, to be safe for the night from the un- 
winged familiars of the house ; but, oh the interest of 
the story and the bird together, for the children in the 
morning ! Could any mortal j^ersuade th^m that there 
was no meaning in her visit ? They watched the little 
feathered bosom with its throb of watchfulness, and 
mused upon its midnight coming with child-wonder ; and 
it is laid away, for life, among their vague thoughts of 
things supernatural. Such are waking dreams that 
need not be interpreted to be felt to have a meaning. 
When the little warbler flew forth again — released into 
the morning air — it was, even to my world-worn belief, 
an angel on his return. 

The difference between city and country life, or their 
respective wayside influences and sympathies, has been 
brought to my mind very strongly within the last week. 
At the door of a house which I passed daily in my ride, 
some two miles from home, I had observed that the horse 
of our village physician was frequently tied ; and, though 



SAD THOUGHTS. 361 

not acquainted with the family, I naturally stopped him, 
when one day coming out as I passed, to inquire who 
was so ill. It was an only daughter, a child of eight or 
nine years of age, not expected to live from hour to hour. 
A fever had struck upon the brain. I rode on, thinking 
of the distres of such a calamity, of course, and blessino- 
God that the blow had not fallen upon my own home, not 
far off. The next day, passing again, I met a neighbor 
just beyond the house, and he stopped me to speak of the 
dying child near by. He knew her. She was a most 
interesting and intelligent little creature, be said, and 1im- 
mother's darling. He was going to see whether she still 
lived. We parted, with his sad-toned words of the dread- 
ful loss it would be, staying in my ears as I went once 
more upon my way. Coming home two days after, I 
rode behind a wagon for some distance, and, by a chance 
lifting of a white cloth by the wind, I saw that it covered 
a child's coffin. I knew where it would stop. The girl 
was dead. As they turned in at the gate, it was irapossi- 
ble not to look up at that house, and know, by its one open 
window, in which room she lay, and picture the coming of 

that fearful thing that was to enclose and hide her the 

laying her into it— the night that must follow, with her 
straightened limbs motionless in that still chamber, and 
her pallid face waiting for that turned-back lid to close 
upon it forever. To look around, at my own home, an hour 

16 



362 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

after, upon a table surrounded by healthy and happy 
children — beloved ones still spared, still uncoffined, and 
with a probable to-morrow of happiness and play instead 
of that dread certainty of a last going forth together and 
a return alone — was to thank God, once more, with a 
profound feeling that no levity could have evaded. 

But houses are closer in the city, and they have their 
deaths in them, like this. And we pass daily along the 
street, under the windows of sick chambers, and close to 
thresholds that lead in where hearts are breaking, and 
beloved forms coffined, and waiting to be borne away. 
Xothing comes to our knowledge. The brick wall shuts 
in their sorrow and its lesson. Sickness and Death speak 
but to those whom they take away — to them and those 
w^ho have loved them. 

It is common to compare city and country life, by 
advantages of health and convenience. This is reasonable 
enough ; but the better air that the soul necessarily 
breathes, where the fibres of neighborly recognition and 
sympathy have life and room, should be considered, as 
well. N'ature has her sad but needed lessons, which she 
gives us thus incidentally and unsought, in a life not too 
crowded and artificial. You hear them in the country, 
always— in the city, almost never. 



DON QUIXOTE. 363 



LETTER LIV. 

A Newfoundland Dog and his Nature — The Beauty of a Brook as a Playfellow 
for Children— Coimtry Life's Opportunity to cultivate Intimacy with Child- 
ren — Local Protection against East Winds — Mechanical Alleviation for Night- 
Coughs, Ac, &.C. 

AprU 22, 1S54. 

The kind of dog that loves water most, loves man most 
— confirming* the chemical solution of a human being, 
viz. : — " five and a-half pailsful of water stirred up with 
forty-five pounds of carbon and nitrogen." Our recent 
acquisition of a " Xewfonndland " seemed to take but 
the same space of time to become acquainted with the 
pond in the glen and the Fivc-and-a-half-pailsful that he 
was particularly to follow and obey. Idlewild has no in- 
mate more joyously at home. Certainly the happiest of 
dogs is a water-dog, as the happiest of elements seems to be 
water. And the prevailing temper of humanity — which 
chemistry thus shows to be hydropathic — is, I am sure, of 
the same natural sparkle and brightness. Oh, how merry 
the brooks are now — in April ! How smilingly people 
in the country meet and exchange knowledge as to the 



364 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

April rains, and tlie grass and grain starting with the 
semi-human touch of those Uttle reminding fingers ! 

Of all playfellows for children there is nothing like a run- 
ning brook. The childish love of power may be gratified, 
perhaps— they can do so many things with it, and its 
changes by rains and droughts are spoken of with so 
much interest, at the same time, by those they look up 
to-a grown-up affair, in fact, of which they can have the 
control. But there seems something more than this in 
the charm of it. They find an accordance with their own 
natures in the way it flows and sparkles-in the careless 
abandonment to all that can lead hither or thither-in 
the brightness and music resumed after every check, and 
the joyousness never wearying, never ending. With our 
larger stream too much of a torrent for the greater part 
of tlje year, the smaller one, which dances into the mea- 
dow from another glen (Funnychild brook we call it), is 
our household's playfellow of playfellows till it dries up 
with mid-summer ; though, even then, its revisitings after 
the heavy showers are hailed like a beloved schoolboy's 
coming home in vacation. What variety there is in the 
games with it, to be sure ! The racing of boats, the 
building of dams and bridges, the digging of viaducts 
and canals, the gathering of wonderful pebbles to bring 
home, the chasing of minims and tadpoles, the finding of 
moss-seats along the banks, and tracing back of tributary 



INTIMACY WITH CHILDREN. 365 

springs — each day's adventures and acbievements won- 
derful to tell. This lesser and coy little glen, so out of 
the way, and open only to the South, has been the haunt 
of Indian children before mine, probably, for my boy has 
brought in two of their small stone hatchets this Spring, 
found in the brook bed ; and some implement or other of 
their chiselling, is always turning up. Children should 
be free to play there till the world ends ! The life-feast — 
begun with the appetite of childhood and ended with the 
satiety of age — diminishing in zest and sweetness as we go 
on — is nowhere spread more invitingly than by such a 
brook. If I had a home to choose for a friend, there should 
be a brook in its grounds, whatever grandeur of prospect 
were given up for it. 

Country life's opportunity to cultivate intimacy with chil- 
dren, seems to me a very important as well as agreeable 
advantage over life in the city. To be able to go out at 
any moment of the day when most convenient, and join a 
gay and loving little troop, and take share in their work 
or their play, unobserved by all eyes, is preferable to an 
opera, I think, as a relaxation from care and as a pleasure 
within reach. And there is fresh air with it, and exer- 
cise ; while its timeliness makes it serviceable to health. 
But the degree to which a man lives a stranger to his 
children, without it — understanding neither their minds nor 
their dispositions — can hardly be understood by those 



366 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

who have lived only iii the city. There is uo charm, for a 
child, like the presence of an elder person who takes an 
interest in his play ; and he loves and opens his nature to 
those who do so, as he loves and is frank with nothing 
else. To enter into the excitment of his occupations, and 
to listen and reply with habitual familiarity and earnest- 
ness to his questions and impartings, is to link his soul to 
you by an every-day strengthening of affection like the 
growing of a branch upon a tree. With his memories of 
these days — all golden and treasured — the parent who is 
the kindly companion out of doors is thus inseparably 
interwoven. Nature ordained such to be the intercourse 
between parent and child. It is seen in the instinctive 
fondness with which it is jumped to and clung to. And, 
while to daily life this gives a charm and a hallowing 
influence, it plants a flower of aff'ection that will bloom 
when old age needs its fragrance of respect and tenderness. 
With a Boston-bred horror of east wind, I sometimes 
get a " lively sense " of a geographical advantage of 
Idlewild, the wall of mountains between us and the east, 
and the diffefence of the weather where its pestilent 
wind gets a chance a little to the north of us. Quite 
inveigled by the stillness, and softness of the air, yester- 
day — the children, complaining of the burthen of their 
winter clothes, and shaggy Don Quixote keeping his coat 
saturated by perpetual plunges into the brook — I started 



VARIATIONS OF TEIIPERATURE. 3GT 

without an overcoat to get to Newburgh before the 
closing of the mail. I was very warm with the trot of 
the first two miles. It was like the air of summer. At a 
turn of the road, however, I felt a sudden change in the 
atmosphere, and, though riding before the wind, the 
check to perspiration started both our coughs — my "own 
and my convalescent mare's. An accelerated pace soon 
quieted us ; but, in returning, the wind was so raw and 
disagreeable for half the way, as to make me note it for 
one of the most immediate transitions of weather I had 
ever experienced. On arriving at the same turn of the 
road where it had became suddenly cold, I felt the tem- 
perature grow summery again, and the rawness, which I 
thought was a sweeping change over the whole country, 
evidently had its limit at a certain mile-stone. Through 
the gap of the Highlands, it blew as through a funnel, and 
the almost perpendicular breast of the Storm-King 
mountain, was a corner to the south of which it had 
no reach or tempering influence. For the remaining two 
miles it was warm riding, as in June. For those who 
have a cough to find a home for, this geographical advan- 
tage of our neighborhod may be worth considering. 

At the risk of being laughed at, by the way, I think I 
will be devoted enough to the invalid cause, to mention 
rather a funny discovery of mine in the way of cough 
alleviation. Of cough itself, I have long had an improving 



S68 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

estimate. It is a removal of the material for diseases ; 
and the medicinal opiate which stills it is calling off the 
dog from the unexpelled enemy. The sleep one loses by 
it — an incidental aggravation of the cleansing process — is 
the only harm it can do, at least till it becomes itself a 
morbid irritation. 

But, lying in bed one night, and wondering at the six 
or seven hours that Nature had been busy in pumping 
out the wrong secretions of my mucous membrane, I fell 
to speculating on its hydraulic action. From the fact that 
the fluid which it brought away was evidently turned 
upon an irritable portion of the stomach or lungs by 
the change of posture in lying down, the use of the cough 
must be to finish its up-hill progress to the mouth. It 
was a pump, the action of which was but the effort to 
overcome the remaining acclivity through a chest and 
head raised upon pillows. Would it be needed f thought 
IJ if it were doivn-kill from the stomach to the mouth ? 
"Why not save this hard-working cough the trouble by 
altering the level ? 

I leaned over the side of the bed, and, with my hand 
rested on the round of a chair for support, tried the 
experiment. It aggravated the cough immediately — or, 
rather, it so increased its ejection of the mucous fluid that 
it seemed the result of a vomit. But, I was tranquillized, 
and went to sleep immediately after. In four or five 



SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT. 3G9 

minutes the doicn-hill cougli seemed to do the work which, 
up-hill, would have occupied hours. It is somewhat for 
the same effect, perhaps, that most cough medicines are 
based upon ipecac. But the advantage of doing it by 
posture is, that the stomach is not weakened by medica- 
tion. 

I have a month or two of experience, on \^hich to 
ground my recommendation of this alleviative to my co- 
pulmonary friends. I get through with my night's irrita- 
tions of throat, now, habitually, by thus increasing and 
expediting them — one hour's work, or, oftencr, a few 
minutes of violent and spasmodic coughing, instead of 
a slow and irritating bark for six or seven hours. The 
sleep after it has the - lull of rest after fatigue. The 
cleansed tongue in the morning shows that the huing of 
the stomach had its airing attended to, while the lines 
around the eyes read a like certificate of reasonable sleep. 



16* 



3t0 L E T T E Tw S FROM I D L E W I L D 



LETTER LY. 

Snow-Storm in April— Newburgh to become a Seaport— Railroad from Hoboken, 
opposite Chamber Street, to West Point and Newburgh — Dutch Aristocracy — 
American diflference from England as to Living near the Old Families, &c. 

April 29, 1S54. 

The third week in April, and the best of sleighing 
Snow covers all around us, averaging (to-day April lUh) 
eighteen inches in depth, say the farmers. It seems in no 
hurry, either. This is the fourth day of hard work on 
the road for anything but runners ; and the stifled sleigh- 
bells, dulled with the heavy flakes, make the out-door 
music, instead of the usual brown thrushes, with their 
" plant it — hoe it — weed it." The cold north wind is of 
a most uncompromising sharpness — (that last participle, 
by the way, looking so like unwrTipromising, as written, 
that the printer is very likely to commit a blunder with 
an improvement in it). Our cedars seem to be the prin- 
cipal sufferers. The usually erect shafts lie all around 
us with their stems doubled and their tops touching 
the ground — an overlading with the moist and heavy 
snow, which seems to happen to them with the seventh 



CHANGES IN THE SEASONS. 371 

year periodicity of calamities to men. Some of the ce- 
dars (like some of us) recover their shape— some break 
under the pressure— many are to be seen, in all the coun- 
try around, with their tall tops bent irrecoverably down- 
wards. 

Our second week of the present April was like the 
weather of the same week last year, mild and hazy as the 
days of the Indian Summer. On the same date as this 
cold snow-fall, however, I find chronicled, in my out-door 
journal of last year, a violent thunder-storm and freshet, 
followed by an opening and separating of the yellow bud- 
tops, that was like a sudden unpacking and exposure for 
sale of an arrival of French gloves. I chanced to cut 
out of a newspaper of last April, and paste in my weather- 
diary, as a remarkable fact, the following passage : — 

" A gentleman who travelled from Hampton to Kingston, Ca- 
nada, on the 16th instant, says that, on some parts of the road, 
the sleighing was as good as if it were in the month of February." 

This is followed, in my note-book, with a record of the 
weather at Idlewild when I read it — '' April 28, hot as 
midsummer ; lilacs in full leaf ; several trees in full blos- 
som ; willows out in leaves ; grass and clover up, and 
Nature recovering from her winter-swoon with a bright 
smile." 

So vary those solemn customers, '' The Seasons," that 



3Y2 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

we rely upon with such faith and corresponding flannel, 
as they come round ! I should have confidently assured 
any pulmonary stranger, inquiring into clmiate hereabouts, 
that so lingering a winter as that Canadian one was never 
known in the Highlands of the Hudson.* 

;}< * -:fr * * * 

We are wide awake, in this part of the country, with 
the idea of lecoming a seaport. In the Report upon the 
great Diameter Railroad to and through the centre of 
the State (from Newburgh to Syracuse, and so on to 
Detroit and San Francisco), the Hiulson, thus far — to the 
broad expanse of deep water spread out before us, and 
which is encircled like a mountain dock by the Highlands 
— is put down as an " extension of the Bay of New York ; 
and Newburgh (continues the Report) is located most 
favorably on that Bay, with the finest of harbors. Ships 
of war and vessels of every description can lie securely 
at anchor there, and moor at her wharves." And this 
saves near a hundred miles of river navigation fto reach 
the railroad at Albany), and saves the forty days' diffe- 
rence between Xewburgh and Albany as to clearance 
from ice, saves the shallows of the Overslaugh, and sixty- 

* My neighbor, the joyous Commodore, whose spirits and memory are un- 
damageable, tells me that there was just such a snow-storm in the latter part 
of the April of 1834 — or, rather, a heavier one, as it quite buried his lawn fence, 
which was visible above the eighteen-inch snow of yesterday. It seems a twen- 
tennial affair. 



A GOOD TIME COMING. ot3 

four miles of absolute distance to Syracuse. The great 
belt of thoroughfare from the Eastern States is to be 
clasped to the Western belt by this same mountain sea- 
port — the main road from Boston to the West, which is 
far towards completion, crossing the Hudson from Fish- 
kill to Xewburgh. 

But Chamber street, in the City of New York, is also to 
be extended to Newburgh, to meet this Diameter road — 
crossing directly to Hoboken, and then following the west- 
ern bank of the Hudson — fifty miles of Chamber street ! So 
Idlewild will be on Chamber street, four miles this side 
of Newburgh. We shall thank Heaven and enjoy, not a 
little, the relief which this direct crossing, from our side 
of the river to the centre of the city, will give us — a re- 
lief from an alternative of nuisance, viz. : — the tedious horse- 
car-ing from Thirty-first street doivn town (from the depot 
of the Hudson River Road), or the hour's delay of jam- 
ming, crowding, dodging and vexing up town (from the 
Erie depot at the blocked-up and struggling Babel of 
Jersey Ferry). It is perplexing and dangerous work to 
get self and belongings to a hotel from the arrival-point 
of either of the two present roads. I have lost temper 
and baggage in the two last attempts I have made at it 
— old traveller as I am, and quite at home as I ought to 
be, in New York and its "dodges." 

It is a curious thing that the Western bank of tho 



3t4 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

Hudson "River, for tlie first fifty miles from New York, is 
as much a wilderness at the present moment, as many a 
river-bank of equal length in the far West. While the 
Eastern shore is a close-linked chain of villages which 
makes it an extension of the suburbs of the city for fifty 
miles, and land all along this thickening and crowded 
line of railroad is selling for one and two thousand dollars 
the acre, the opposite river-bank from Hoboken to West 
Point is mostly a vague desert, of which the chance tra- 
veller knows nothing, except that Cozzens's caravanserai 
makes one break in its long stretch of terra incognitia. 
Most of the land has been, hitherto, comparatively value- 
less. And it has been valueless and unknown only be- 
cause no railroad gave access to it. Yet — within an hour 
of New York, and with all the navigation-advantages 
and scenery of the Hudson — a continuation, as it soon will 
he, of Chamher street to West Point — what a magical 
change is to take place on that fifty miles of river-bank I 
Tillages and country-seats will multii^ly, we venture to 
predict, as they were never seen to multiply before. The 
"Keport" expresses itself well on the general magic of 
railroad influence, to be tried here with such unprece- 
dented opportunity : — 

" The effect of railways everywhere has been the same, greatly 
enhancing all property within their influences, and especially 
within twenty or twenty-five miles of them on each side. 



DUTCH ARISTOCRACY 



3T5 



Hon. D. D. Andrews, in his report to Congress, says :— *It is esti- 
mated by tho President of the Nashville and Chattanooga 
Road that the increased value of a belt of laud, ten miles wide, 
lying up(5h each side of its line, is equal at least to seven dollars 
and a half per acre, or ninety-six thousand dollars for every mile 
of road, which will cost only about twenty thousand dollars per 
mile.' ' It is believed that the construction of the three thousand 
miles of railway in Ohio will add to the value of the landed pro 
perty in the State at least five times the cost of the roads, assum 
ing this to be sixty million of dollars.' • The valuation of Massachu 
setts went up from 18i0 to 1850, from two hundred and ninety 
million to five hundred and eighty million dollars, and by far the 
greater part of it due to ihe numerous railroads she has con- 
structed.' Seventy-two towns, not enjoying railway advantages, 
did not increase in population during that period." 

The extension-quill of Chambers street for fifty miles, 
with its feather of ten-mile breadth of farms, will cipher 
up the market supplies to balance the other statistics of 
New York growth and commerce ; but there is also a 
very possible social result, which is not likely to be put 
down with the cost and profit of the road, but which is 
as interesting a probability as it is purely a national one. 

From the first settlement of the country, the Eastern 
shore of the Hudson has been a garden of Dutch aris- 
tocracy. It was divided up into the estates of "old 
families," from Manhattan to Albany— the Knickerbock- 
ers giving way reluctantly and grudgingly even to the 



316 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

well-paying iiitrusioDs of improvement ; and, even still, 
strengthening their fences around what they can afford to 
retain, and raising signs of warning to trespassers, with 
the jealousy of dignity invaded. Railway stations have 
been built, contrary to their protest and will ; villages 
have sprung up like mushrooms along the line of the 
opposed road ; country-houses, school-houses, and churches 
have thickened like bubbles on a canal break — and yet 
they rule. Those of the thousands of new residents 
whose beautiful houses are acknowledged to " belong to 
the first people," have propitiated the Knickerbocracy. All 
others live isolated amid their fresh paint and shingles. 

But the most American feature of our time is the suc- 
cessful voting of such aristocracy to be '' old-fogey-ism," 
and the being merrily independent of it — anywhere out 
of its immediate neighborhood. While, in England, a 
new-comer's preference for the site of a villa would be 
nearness to an "old family" mansion, in our country 
(conveniences being equal), the preference would be dis- 
tance from it. In the natural rivalry for consequence, 
every self-enriched man prefers fair play and a fresh start 
to any hitchings-on or borrowings by subserviency. To 
genial Geoffrey, at Sunnyside, of course, any home- 
seeker in the Republic would like to be a neighbor — and 
an honoring and deferential one — but he is a Knicker- 
bocker and himself beside. 



GREAT CHANGES. 371 

" Old-fogey-ism," however, is a growth of centuries. 
While the Eastern bank of the Hudson has been two hun- 
dred years in setthng and embellishing, the Western bank 
will start new and overtake it in from five to tw^enty. 
There will be ''first people" everywhere. There is no 
help for it. But it is " a fair field and no favor " on the 
Hoboken shore. It will be so rapid a settlement of 
neighborhoods, too, that there will be no time for mould 
to cover up false claims to " gentility " — none impregna- 
bly the first by grave-yard iteration. As soon as this 
extremity of the great Diameter Railroad is completed — 
as soon as Chambers street is extended to West Point, for 
its first link of fifty miles — the home-seeking crowd, who 
wish to bo within an hour of the city with the families 
they are enriching, will divide up this now desert river- 
side into estates and villa-grouAds, while farmers and gar- 
deners will cluster behind them in the valleys and on the 
hills — a Minerva-birth of a rich and populous range of 
country without infancy or weakness. This will be new, 
even in our newest of histories. The social contrast of the 
two banks of the Hudson will be without a precedent in 
the world^s progress — '' old-fogeyism " on one side of a 
river exclusively, and start-fair-dom on the other. 



318 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER LYI. 

Birds suffering from Snow— Answer to a Fault-finder— Preparing for Old Age 
by learning to live with Nature— Another Estimate of the Value of Farming 
— Common and strangely unvaried Idea of " a Villa " — Hints as to choosing 
and arranging a Home in the Country, &c., &c. 

May 7, 1S54. 

We should have a crop of music, this summer, if the 
sowing of dead birds would reproduce them, for they are 
scattered over the fields in great numbers — starved and 
frozen by the deep snow of a third week of April. We 
set the men to work and cRared a portion of our lawn to 
spread crumbs on a bit of bare ground for the singers of 
Idlewild, and it brought in such a troop of little mendi- 
cants as was curious to see. The snow still lies in spots 
all over the hills (April 26th, to-day), but the grain looks 
brilliantly green beside it. The farmers say that the 
wheat was hot-bedded and forwarded considerably by the 
week's covering from the air — Nature, like the Indian, 
finding warmth under a very cold blanket. 

I am found fault with, a little, by a very pleasant 
writer in the Horticulturist — though scarcely with reason, 



RURAL LITERATURE. 379 

considering that I have not yet occupied my premises a 
year, and considering that I have (among other things) 
set out, already, near a hundred fruit trees. Thus runs 
my homily : 

*'Ia all parts of our country there is a new and constantly 
increasing disposition to shun the city and seek the enjoyments of 
country life. The question arises, What has given our people such 
a love of rural life ? Perhaps our own and other horticultural 
and the agricultural journals have done as much as any one cause 
to produce this result. Then the better cultivation of the soil, 
better and more tasty buildings, improved stock and beautiful 
gardens and orchards, have increased the attractivenese of the 
country, and thrown a charm around country life. The log cabin 
snrrounded with stumps, was bearable ; it showed necessity, and 
adaptation, and gave an earnest of better things in the future. But, 
when this was suffered to go to partial decay, or substituted by an 
unsightly board house, surrounded with half-decayed stumps and 
tumble-down rail-fences, it was a picture by no means attractive 
to the man of taste. "With this love of rural life has sprun;^ up a 
rural literature. We have had ' Willis's Rural Letters,' * Up 
Country Letters,' and now ' Up the River,' with many others of a 
somewhat similar character. We wish these authors knew more 
of horticulture — that they were familiar with fruits and flowers, 
and plants and trees — then their writings would be more interest- 
ing and profitable." 

This occurs in a review of Mr. Shelton's delightful book, 
"Up the River," and he is especially called to account 



380 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

* 

for his outlay of zeal and literature upon Shanghai fowls. 
But nothing so luxurious has been my hindrance to horti- 
culture. Bridging streams, damming torrents, building 
roads along the shelves of precipices, shaping lawns and 
clearing underbrush, have been my first year's more press- 
ing occupations. 

But a prospective view of farming and horticulture, for 
me, is graver and fonder than the reviewer would be likely 
to have thought probable. I am looking forward to farm- 
ing, or learning to live actively with Nature (patient and 
company-supplying and occupation-giving Nature), in case 
old age should befall me. With my present loosened hold 
upon hfe, the chances are against needing her kindly lap, 
except to sleep under her green apron without waking ; 
but, with any possibility of outHving the period of life's 
fullest reciprocities, the lack of this one and (it seems to 
me) only refuge for the superfluity we become, would be a 
calamity indeed. Books are something to the old, but 
the mind's relish lessens and shortens : they are tools to 
the weakened hand — tools with which no more work is to 
be done. Friends are something — but, ah, the dread of 
being "in the way," even of those who love us ! In- 
doors, with its open window or fire-side, is a place of 
repose — but one that grows more and more like a prison, 
as we are thought " best off" there, and " disposed of," 
and at liberty to be forgotten. From old age in the 



REFLECTIONS ON FARM LIFE. 381 

crowded and busy city — old age anyNvhere unemployed — 
may God iu bis mercy deliver mo I 

But the overseeing of a farm, even without labor, may 
be one man's efficient employment. An habitual exercise 
of acquired acknowledge in agriculture — exercise in 
directing and observing the culture of familiar soil — is no 
fatigue. An old man may do it as well as a young man. 
The master is hardly wanted for more than to be always 
out of doors. His oversight secures industry and cor- 
rectness, and his mind, with its unvexed leisure, plans 
and arranges while he walks over his fields and among 
liis men. On his horse or in his wa2:on he saves 
one man's labor in errands to the village, or to the 
blacksmith, or to the neighbor for exchange or sale 
of crops. Till crippled, or blind, or bed-ridden, he fills a 
full place, serves those who belong to him, and cumbers 
no spot of earth, no heart and no pocket. The farm 
never tires of his society. Nature keeps prodigally 
responding with her fertility and beauty to his demands — 
as cheerfully ready to bud and flower and bear fruit for 
him as for his handsomest grandson. With his laborers, 
and his horses, his herds and his fowls, all needing him, 
and calling for more time or thought, if he had it, he is 
never lonely. And is he anywhere likely to be so uncn- 
vied, so respected, so suited with tranquillity, and so 
mentally and bodily wdl ? 



382 LETTERS FRO II IDLE WILD. 

Of tlie seventy acres that I hope to be "out of the 
way" upon (if, as I said before, old age should befall me), 
thirty or so are arable, and in terraces rising one above 
another from the meadow on the Hudson. With the one 
or two acres of black muck, five feet deep, in a corner of 
this meadow, Professor Mapes would be delighted. I 
have studied the lectures and essays of the practical and 
learned Professor on the use of it, and my horses have 
been, all winter and spring, drawing it to the uplands, 
while the rocks were being blasted to give it clear space 
and a chance at the sub-soil. We look for a handsome 
corn crop this year, to begin with, — but hereafter we 
humbly hope to "pile up the progress." It is a matter 
of sanguine anticipation and preparation, and an excite- 
ment of most joyous alternateness with literary labor. 
Literature, in fact, is irksome work in comparison — keep- 
ing me in doors many an hour when things in which I am 
more interested are going on in the open air. The days 
when I can be nothing but a farmer will be days in which 
I shall be that much more at liberty to be happy. 

By the fruit-trees of all kinds that have poured in 
upon Idlewild, from friends and readers at a distance, I 
seem to be generally booked for horticulture, — and I shall 
try my hand at it certainly ; though not to the hindrance 
of the more breadthy farming for which we have the room. 
The rich gentlemen on the " estates" around me say that 



CITY IDEAS OF A COUNTRY HOME. 383 

nothmg can be made by it, — but their estimates are 
rather to l)e put down to their fashion of, kaughty-cxA- 
turo than to the grain raising of more humble industry. 
And yet it is odd that these wealthy ruralizers do not 
find farming well worth their while. With house and 
land, *' any-how"— barn, cattle, and fowls, " any-how"— 
horses that need exercise, " any-how," and spare time of 
their own, " any-how" — they have that number of advan- 
tages to start with, which need not tairly be reckoned in 
the outlay. And, if the amusement were taken into the 
account, the price of an opera box for the season might 
be put down among the profits of a fruit-garden, over and 
above what were sold and eaten. Farm produce is rapidly 
rising, however, and that may bring even " lordly manors" 
to the plough. 

I have often thought of preaching a sermon on the o'm 
stereotyped idea with which city people select and model a 
ho?ne in the country. From the numbers who call on and 
write to me for information as to the sites for residences 
hereabouts, I am, perhaps, more in the way of knowing 
what is usually sought. They all want a villa, or its ca- 
pabilities :— parks and lawn ; beautiful view from the por- 
tico ; barn and outbuildings out of sight ; gravel-walks 
and flower-garden, groves, avenues, and a fountain. And 
this is all very well, for those who still retain their home 
and occupations in the city, and who come to the country 



384 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

only for three montlis of idliug in the summer. With 
money enough to tear down and build up, such improvers 
of the landscape are large contributors to the general 
welfare, and should be thanked and admired. But is there 
no other class of seekers of new homes in the country ? 

My own sympathy is rather with a place that looks like 
a farm, an old one. A new building is rather a draw- 
back. I would rather take any house, of whatever shape, 
and, by a few very easy and un-costly alterations, make it 
look piduresque-ly homely. Additions to the edges of the 
roof to make them project, stoops of the largest kind to 
the side and front doors, perhaps a portico where comfort 
and taste would combine to wish one, and frames and 
trellises for vines and creepers, are simple and cheap 
changes that would make the most angular and un- 
sightly house look pleasantly enough. And (without 
going so far as the Havanese nobiUty, who keep their 
carriage in their front parlor), I like to see barn or stable 
close enough to group in with the house and orchard. The 
guest should see the shed he can tie his horse under, and 
the tree or bush where he can find the plums or the ber- 
ries. And it should be evident to any passoa* by that the 
owner can go to his barn a dozen times a day, without 
hat or boots, and shake down hay for his cattle, or har- 
ness his own wagon for a drive. No man either looks, or 
is independent in a country home, who has not his stable 



INEXPERIENCE LEADS TO ERROR. 385 

completely uudcr his eye — himself the first to kuow when 
a horse wants shoeing, or a wheel wants greasing, and 
hindered ^leve?', and in no manner of thing, by the absence 
or neglectfulness, or unwillingness of the " hired man.'^ 
For me, aside from the convenience of it, there is a cer- 
tain " animal magnetism " which makes the company of 
my horses and cows very agreeable. 

Yet there are those who have lived all their lives among 
brick walls and sidewalks, and who, finding themselves 
able to give thieir children a home in the country, and 
yielding to a long-sujDpressed yearning of nature to allow 
to themselves this luxury at last, are still likely to make 
irreparable mistakes from inexperience and lack of coun- 
sel. Such a one would, perhaps, build his new cottage 
on the summit of a bare knoll for the sake of the view, 
rather than under the shelter, and with the background 
of a wood, ready grown. He might cut down trees be- 
cause they stood irregularly, or forget how the spring 
water or the winter winds were to be managed, or neglect 
altogether to foresee the incidentalnesses of up hill and 
down, rain-washings to the road, frost-heavings to walls, 
etc., etc., etc. 

In talking to one of my neighbors the other day, I told 
him he ought to make a profession of giving a start to 
exactly this class of new-comers to the country. It is 
all very well for the wealthy, who purchase estates and 

n 



386 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

build villas, to send for a landsca;pe-gardencr, and pay high 
for a plan of grounds, and the layings out, plantings and 
embellishings, such as taste may dictate, without reference 
to cost. But counsel that is both cheaper and more prac- 
tical than this, is wanted by the home-seeker of more 
moderate means. The neighbor I speak of (Mr. Chat- 
field) is one of a kind that should belong, like a carpen- 
ter or blacksmith, to every neighborhood, for this very 
use and employment. He is an uneducated (or rather a 
self-educated) and working man. But he has passed a 
life of rural industry and economy, is a most successful 
raiser of fruit, and a skilful gardener, knows everything 
about buildings and farms, and their wants and conve- 
niences; and, to the very best of practical good sense, he 
adds a taste and a knowledge, and a love of scenery that 
are quite above his condition in life. For a moderate 
compensation, I presume (though I write this entirely 
without his consent or knowledge), Mr. Chatfield would 
go and pass a week or more at a spot chosen fx>r a resi- 
dence, and tell all its capabilities, foresee all its difficul- 
ties, direct its location of buildings and garden, and 
planting of trees and orchards, and, in short, give the 
wisdom leforehand, which could otherwise be got only by 
a costly and somewhat mortifying experience. A begin- 
ner at anything wi-doors — singing or painting, beard-grow- 
ing or poetizing — may be his own teacher and adviser, 



FAILURES SOON KNOWN. 387 

and keep his failures to himself. But the choosing and 
arranging of a home is an out-iioov matter, of any mis- 
takes in which the "people round" are most annoyingly 
aware. 



388 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD 



LETTER LYII. 

Remarkable Land-slide — Woman nearly Buried— Our Gateway Stopped— 
Ravages of Floods — Embellishment of a Neighbor's Grounds by a Land- 
slide, &c., &c. 

May 13, 1854. 

There are odd surprises, occasionally, to wake us out 
of sleep ; but one of my nearest neighbors was aroused 
in tlie dead of last night (April 29) with a remarkable 
interruption to her dreams — a quince-tree from her gar- 
den entering her bed-room, followed by a neighboring 
hill ! The cottage, at the same time, began to move 
from its foundations ; the chimney and rafters tumbled 
in ; the weight of the earth which was pouring down 
upon her bed crushed it to the floor ; and her '' old man," 
who slept in the room above, came through the ceiling. 
As the reader will have easily divined, it was the over- 
whelming of a cottage by one of the land-slides of the 
late unprecedented ruin. 

But these first waking surprises of Mrs. S. were fol- 
lowed by rather a terrible half-hour. In bed with her 
was her daughter-in law, whose nearness to a critical 



PERILOUS POSITION. 389 

period was the occasion of sharing her room ; and, by 
the sounds of gasping and choking, she discovered that 
this poor young woman was buried under the liquid mass 
of earth which was sweeping them away. With the bed 
broken down, the floor lifted to a slope, and the ruins 
falling in around her, she was guided through the terrible 
confusion and darkness by nothing but the sound ; but 
she found the head of the struggling sufferer at last, and 
was only able, with her hands, for a long time (she says 
"over an hour") to scratch away the mud from her 
daughter's mouth and keep it clear enough to enable her 
to breathe. The weight of the earth accumulating on 
the coverlid effectually prevented the extrication of the 
buried woman, and, as the neighbors were long in being 
summoned thither in the dead of the night, the struggle 
probably seemed as interminable as it was awful. 

You might almost throw a stone from Idlewild lawn 
upon the roof of this cottage, and, of course, such an 
event was a stirring morning's news to us. In my daily 
ride along the beach, I pass their door ; and, from way- 
side chat with the " old man," as he chopped wood or 
hunted up his vagrant cows and pigs, I could not but 
feel the calamity to have happened to one of ourselves. 
Sympathy, notwithstanding, however, there was a ludi- 
crous expression about the Sunday morning look of the 
little building — standing, corner-wise to the road, with 



390 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

its after-part cocked in the air, the peach-tree, which had 
checked its course apparently, sustaining its intoxicated 
posture with difficulty, and a quince-tree leaning with its 
buds out of the front window ! The tipsy-looking cot- 
tage was one of half a dozen humble dwellings built 
under the lofty river-bank which rises to the general level 
of the country ; and the two or three trees before it, 
and the small garden behind it, filled the narrow slope 
between the water's edge and the well-grassed ascent. 
Other buildings were carried away by the slides, a mile 
farther down, but no lives were endangered that I could 
hear of. 

One of our own hills of Idlewild took a walk at the 
same time ; and, by stopping to take breath in the middle 
of the road, has so completely altered the shape of our 
nearest corner to Newburgh that we shall be compelled 
to remove our main gate and make a new entrance alto- 
gether.* It is a pity, because it shuts us off from an 
avenue of full-grown hemlocks, and forces us to follow 
the public road outside of them. No small outlay of 
contrivance and labor has been expended to wind in the 
approach by those beautiful and stately evergreen trees 
— now to be exchanged for a new and unshaded gate 
through an open wall ! I must own to finding this hard to 
bear — much harder than such casualties as labor will re- 

* This gate has since been restored. 



DESTRUCTION BY FRESHETS. 391 

store. That one of our glen bridges was washed away, 
our upper dam torn to pieces, an acre of green meadow 
covered witii gravel, a beautiful river-slope stripped of 
its sod, and unsightly channels cut in the brook-banks, 
right and left, are lesser and more remediable damages, 
for which we may easier find comfort. Our neighbors at 
the Moodna paper-mill, who are damaged to the amount 
of two or three thousand dollars, and will not get to 
work again probably for five or six weeks, tell us we have 
*' got off pretty well I" 

It will be a month before some of our choked-up public 
roads will be re-opened, and the swept-off bridge across 
the Moodna (a mile from this), and others along the va- 
rious streams around us will be much longer in rebuilding. 
But the worst of it is the continuance, of sluice-way that 
will follow every one of these slide-brakes in the hills. 
The raw sand-and-clay chasms are too precipitous to hold 
vegetation, or even to be re-sodded, if the expense of that 
could be borne. They are eye-sores and trouble-makers 
henceforward. We shall see what June verdure and 
foliage will do, to out-conspicu-fy the ugliness of them. 

It has been a great flood ; but that heavy snow of the 
third week of April did the work — just holding on to a 
previous flood (as one of my men says) till this one could 
hook on to it. The trouble was the country's being called 
upon to get rid of two floods at once. Every inch of 



392 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

ground was saturated with water — snow having held it 
back uumelted for a week — when this heaviest of Spring 
rains commenced. The streams were already at their 
highest when the new freshet began. (And so accumu- 
late and give way hearts and patiences sometimes !) 

The newspapers (May 2d) have come in with accounts 
of disaster by flood, showing that we were bearing but 
our share, this time, with the country at large. This has 
a certain consolation in it, for our previous water-spouts 
and avalanches have been so local^ that I had felt the ro- 
mantic picturesqueness of Idlewild to be, like beauty to 
a woman, a dangerous gift, after all. Burthens are les- 
sened by more shoulders under them. One of my wealthy 
neighbors, by the way, is indebted to a land-slide for 
quite an embellishment to his grounds. His lawn, skirted 
with magnijQcent forest-trees, abutted directly over the 
Hudson — a landscape table-land, like the level summit of 
a mountain pushed to the water's edge. A portion of 
this, with ten or twelve full-grown monarchs of the wood 
quietly settled thirty feet nearer to the river level, with its 
vast oaks, elms, and tulip-trees, standing perfectly un- 
altered in their erectness ; the grass unbroken between 
them and around their roots, and the general aspect of 
the greensward exactly the same. The whole area now 
forms the lower ste^'pe or terrace, graduating, very beauti- 
fully to the eye, the descent to the beach below. A pri- 



ONE man's loss another's gain. 393 

vate wood-road ran under the precipitous bank, and, curi- 
ously enough, the descending mass acted like the weight 
of water in a pipe-curve, lifting this road, which lay forty 
feet beyond, to about the height of ten feet above its for- 
mer elevation — the dropped lawn not having changed its 
place, except by vertical descent. " The hills" are cer- 
tainly making a move in consequence of water's getting 
the upper hand, though whether the Maine Liquor Law 
will claun it to be a " leap for joy," we are waiting for 
some orator to let us know. 



394 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER LYIIL 

Immense Freshets— Islands in Solution — Curious Slides — Brickyards along the 
Hudson — Irish Laborers, and the Contrast between them and Native-Born 
Country People — The Infusorial Cemetery, &c., &c. 

May 20, 1S54. 

The Hudson, just now, is thick with yellow earth — the 
vagrant dilution of hundreds of honest farms, inveigled 
away from their homes in the mountains by the Lurley of 
the waters ; but, unlike the Mississippi, which is the 
pathway of the same sort of truants, our North River 
has no Delta at its outlet to receive and reclaim the wan- 
derers. Usually as clear as crystal, the Hudson has 
been, for the few days since this unprecedented succession 
of floods, a current of creamy thickness, and so closely 
strewn with brush and flood-wood, besides, that the fleets 
of steamers which are doing the work of the interrupted 
railroads, have been inconveniently impeded. What a 
pity that such a group of lovely islands in solution should 
be passing New York and Hoboken, without a precipi- 
tate to "dump" them along the Jersey shore! Thou- 
sands of acres of fertile mountain-soil passing those Jer- 
sey "^a^5," unthought-of and unarrested! And it is the 



AN EXTEMPORISED BRICK- YARD. 395 

best part of the mountains, too — the mellow stream- 
slopes and leaf-packed meadows within reach of the tor- 
rents. Whole banks of May-flowers and forget-me-nots 
have gone from Idlewild — and daises and violets, that we 
had waited for, and found, and loved, this very April! 
Well, the sea, with its vast forgetfulness, is welcome to 
them. Or, they can be sweet on some far isle where 
their roots may be thrown, without telling who has loved 
them before — only there will be wasted sunshine for a 
while, where the warm rays used to find them, and awake 
their fragrance and beauty. 

Nature, like " great minds," which, Emerson says, 
" have nothing to do with consistency," is sometimes as 
funny as she is disastrous with her ravages. While la- 
mentably disfiguring the grounds of one of my neighbors, 
she has slipped money into his pocket, hand over hand — 
not only disclosing a bank of the richest blue clay, by a 
land-slide, but furnishing the brick-yard where it could be 
worked, by extending a platform of earth and trees into 
the river I From what was a straight gravel beach under 
a wooded hill, a few days ago, there is now a projecting 
point of thirty feet, with the trees on it to '' log it in " for 
a wharf, and the loose brush ready mixed with the " fill- 
ing in" of mud. Directly behind and above it is (in the 
place of the loveliest of groves shading the river bank) a 
broad hill-face of most unadulterated blue clay, worth 



396 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD, 

much more for bricks than the scenery was worth for 
beauty. The promontory, by the way, of which this is the 
river front, is probably the most commandingly picturesque 
spot on our portion of the Hudson. It was once a moun- 
tain island, just off the shore at the mouth of the Mood- 
na; and, to Idlewild, it is the middle ground of our river 
landscape — half a mile of Moodna-water between us and 
its grove-shaded point, and the two-mile width of the Hud- 
son extending beyond. With the large mansion upon the 
summit, and the park-like slopes of woodland and lawn, 
it forms the loveliest feature of the northern view from 
our windows — " to be continued," fortunately, as the 
brick development is on the opposite side. Our friend 
and neighbor mourns, as we do, the inroad upon the love- 
liness of his home — but, of the blocks of Xew York 
houses that might now be dug out of his side, he, of 
course, pays the rent while refusing to sell the clay to 
the brick-makers; and it becomes a question between 
grounds less disturbed, or more property for children. 

Brick-yards are our eye-sore, in the scenery of the 
Highlands. They will be, till the bank of blue clay 
along the edge of the river is entirely exhausted, leaving 
% terrace-bank, more suited for improving and beautifying 
than the original one. For the present — say a forty-year 
hegira of bricks — the traveller is expected to be Mind to 
our " lower story " of landscape, just as, in Yankee archi- 



BRICK- YARD LABOR. 39t 

tecture, the model of the house is entu-ely independent of 
the *' kitchen basement." You do not trouble your cri- 
tical taste about the cellar of an Italian palace ! Yery 
well. Then merely allow us Americans the very trifling 
additional indulgence of having our cellar open in 
front. 

In the drives along the upper road (one to two hundred 
feet above the river ) we overlook, of course, the brick- 
hives along the water's edge, and among my wealthy 
neighbors I find there has lately been a " strike " as to 
" commuting " any longer upon the lower turnpike — all 
combining to ignore it, disgusted with the increasing ob- 
structions and disfigurements ; and, with time and car- 
riage-horses to spare, preferring to make a habit of the 
longer and cleanlier upper route for their daily drive to 
Newburgh. But, unsightly as they are, these miles of 
brick-yards are studies in their way. It is a loose and 
lively Irish fringe to our quiet American neighborhood of 
sagacious and thrifty farmers. If a Yankee condescends 
to be among them at all, it is in the capacity of teamster 
or ''boss" — brick-yard-ing labor for day wages being a 
peg below the pride of a boy born in the country. Paddy 
likes it because there are so many of the b'hoys to work 
with him — farm-labor being quite too lonely for his liking 
— and because he is at home in the mud ; and there is no 
restraint on his dress, manners or morals ; and rainy 



398 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

days and Sundays are " rale holidays," with no barn-work, 
nor cattle to look after, nor other hindrance to his going 
to Newburgh, where there are promiscuous attractions. 
If not the cleanest and best behaved of wayside popula- 
tion, however, the Irish are a variety that comes in well 
for contrast and invigoration to the musing and half con- 
scious picture formed upon the eye during a drive. In 
the stout legs and arms, rosy cheeks and honest propor- 
tions of the women who belong to, and trudge with them, 
or lodge near and group around with wash-tubs and chil- 
dren, there is a supply for the lacking bulk and bloom of 
our American race, which it is a comfort to see on the 
same day with the slender-limbed intelligence of farmers' 
daughters, and the pale-faced pride and respectability of 
farmers' sons. It is an admirable graft — the Hiber- 
nian stock upon ours — for it acclimates and improves 
admirably, if left to itself for a generation or two. Ire- 
land is the California whence comes the specie for our 
health-currency ; and the precious ore, though unsightly 
till refined and coined, looks fairer than other dirt when 
its value is remembered. And, may I confess, at the 
same time, to a certiMn relief in a mile or two of jolly and 
careless faces, such as the Irish on our lower road to 
Newburgh, after the miles of unsmiling responsibility of 
countenance and persevering anxiety of demeanor through 
which one runs a gauntlet of low spirits before arriving 



AX INFUSORIAL CEMETERY. 399 

at that part of the country ? Every car in our Ameri- 
can train is so sure to be a locomotive I 

I see that one of the daily papers mentions the line of 
mud discoloration, from the river freshets, as extending far 
out into the harbor of New York — a descent of country 
cousins, or fresh water and its belongings, which must 
have temporarily driven the finny loafers of dock and 
wharf very nearly out of sewer-reach and soundings. At 
the meeting of salt water and fresh, there is an infusorial 
cemetery (Professor Johnson tells us), the myriads of in- 
sects which belong to each realm of the element dying 
with the touch of the other, and precipitating at once to 
the bottom — thus producing the twenty-five per cent, of 
animal remains found in the mud of all Deltas at the 
mouth of rivers. Whereabouts is this death-line on the 
Hudson ? The water is brackish even as high as West 
Point ; but there must be a broad margin, a mile or two 
in extent, where the full tide of the sea meets the perpe- 
tual down-flow of the stream — an insect "valley of the 
shadow of death " hitherto unrequiemed and un-named. 
Insects are universalists, I believe, and there must be a 
heaven for both " beyonds "— Sunnyside, perhaps, the Ely- 
sium opening from the Infusorial Cemetery of the Sea. 
Mr. Irving should be '' in spirits,'' all the time— or per- 
haps the down tide and the up impregnate the air by 
turns with dirge and Hallelujah. Tell us of your unac- 



400 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

countableness, dear Geoffrey — your tears and smiles which 
yon have never yet attributed to the rise and fall of the 
river at the edge of your lawn — and let us trace to these 
unconscious influences of another world, to this change- 
ful poetry of entomology, the sad and gay thoughts we 
find woven in your style's sweet alternation. 

From my window, as I write, I can see a hill-side, from 
which an acre at least of thickly up-springing young 
cedars have slid away with the freshet — a contribution of 
monumental trees which might well be stopped at the 
death-line of the Hudson, and planted round its cemetery 
border. 



VEG-ETABLE DIGNITY. 401 



LETTER LIX. 

Distinctions of Rank in Tegetablcs— Splendid Outburst of Spring— Chivalry 
among Fowls— A daily Steamboat Luxury for this Neighborhood — Philosophy 
of Visits to the City, &c., &c. 

May 27, 1S54. 

The potatoes are going into the ground like reluctant 
dollars this week — the farmer, with the late marvellous 
rise in the price, and the increasing uncertainties of the 
crop, feeling as if he were making an investment of 
more ready money than he can spare, and for a return 
that is too skittish for his peace of mind. The once 
humble potato, meantime, that was a staple necessity, 
the stand-by for the farmer's table and cattle-trough, 
is now a promoted luxury, hasty-pudding and corn cakes 
occupying its familiar place. I noticed that my farm- 
tenant yesterday spoke of the potato-^ar^eTi — that same 
modest acre having been hitherto known as the potato- 
'patch. So bud and flower distinctions and titles, even 
among the vegetables of a republic ! 

We have had a week of heavenly Spring (the middle 
of May), and the belated flowers and leaves have 



402 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

overtaken the season with a jump. The fields and 
woods are — oh, how beautiful ! With such mornings, 
noons and evenings coming round, one is reminded 
of those globe-animalculse, idle and blest, who, by 
mere and unconscious revolving, are brought in contact 
with what they require. Happiness seems but the 
time of day, in such weather — so sure to come and 
so naturally making a part of everything. To breathe 
and be abroad is heaven, in country-life just now. 

if; ^ ^ ^ ^ 

With the sudden outburst of this belated Spring, 
the foliage is of a singular brilliancy of tint, in the 
valleys around us. This morning, May 20, shows like 
a gala-day of the emerald, so festal is the dazzling 
brightness of the green, and so joyous is the effect 
of the new leaves among the bronze-tinted tassels of 
the evergreens. A thousand tables set with alabaster 
cups could not glitter more festively in the sun than the 
level-spread blossoms of the dogwoods, spotting the 
acclivities of Idlewild just now, and with the rainbows 
of wild flowers scarfing and carpeting the grove and 
meadow, the merriment in the fuller streams, the bustle 
of the building birds, and the intoxicating vitality of the 
air, it seems as if one must oneself revivify and grow — 
somehow or somewhere — to belong to this continuation 
of Eden. Such Springs cannot be all for vegetation. 



THE LADDER OF EXISTENCES. 403 

There must be a 5o?i^Summer to come after a May like 
this — wakened by its warmth and music, color and 
fragrance — even if the root-reaching juices of the earth 
are not for our dulled pulses and fibres. 

I had an amusing proof, this morning, however, that 
we belong to a world of many spheres* — all life by 

* With the chance that the reader may not be altogether " booked up " as to 
the ladder of existences of which ours is but a middling round, I will quote 
what the Rev. Mr. Graham, in his Lecture on Spiritual Manifestations, says of 
the steps above us, though my present comment is upon a manifestation of a 
step 1)61010 : 

" There are seven spheres in and around the earth, in which man is said to 
pass his existence preparatory to entering into heaven. The earth is the first : 
from this man passes by death to the second, which is above the atmosphere, a 
height of six miles. The third, still above, occupies about forty miles in height ; 
the fourth, yet further off, occupying a space much larger ; and so on in geome- 
trical ratio until you come to the seventh sphere, whence we are all eventually 
to pass by a kind of second death into heaven. In these different spheres 
dwell the spirits of the departed, studying the alphabet, if need be, learning 
arithmetic, and so on, up to fluxions, if they have not studied these on earth. 
They have their pet dogs and birds with them. They are all clothed as upon 
earth ; if rich, according to taste. One supernal theologian tell us that many 
of the females wear a plain robe confined at the waist by a girdle. A large 
portion of them wear their hair in flowing ringlets. Men dress as their taste 
inclines ; some in Oriental style, with turbans and Persian trousers ; others in 
the fashionable attire of the day. Most of them wear all of the beard. They 
but wish for dress and have it. They are taller or shorter than when on earth 
as they may choose to be. They cannot well see through opaque bodies as 
walls, nor beneath the earth's surface ; nor can they pass through solid sub- 
stances, or a small space. They want doors and windows opened to pass 
through, and seldom deign to descend a chimney. We have no knowledge of a 
Bpirit having visited any of the planets." 



404 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

no means responsive to the same promptings. With a 
half-hour to spare, I had set it to thought-music by 
opening " Rural Hours " (that charming book by the 
daughter of Fenimore Cooper), and the following passage 
particularly arrested my attention : 

W G American women, certainly, owe a debt of gratitude to 
our countrymen for their kindness and consideration of us gene- 
rally. Gallantry may not always take a graceful form in this part 
of the world, and mere flattery may be worth as little here as else- 
where ; but there is a glow of generous feeling towards women in 
the hearts of most American men, which is highly honorable to 
them as a nation and as individuals. In no country is the protec- 
tion given to woman's helplessness more full and free — in no 
country is the assistance she receives from the stronger arm so 
general — and nowhere does her weakness meet with more forbear- 
ance and consideration. Under such circumstances, it must be 
woman's own fault if she be not thoroughly respected also. The 
position accorded to her is favorable ; it remains for her to fill it 
in a manner worthy of her own sex, gratefully, kindly, and simply ; 
with truth and modesty of heart and life ; unwavering fidelity of 
feeling and principle, with patience, cheerfulness, and sweetness 
of temper — no unfit return to those who smoothe the daily path for 
her." 

Laying down the book at this complimentary tribute 
to our sex, I stepped out upon the lawn to speak to a 
gardener at work on one of the gravel walks, and found 
the man leaning on his spade and watching a domestic 



AN UNNATURAL CONFLICT. 405 

drama of somewhat different feather. A large turkey- 
hen, the widowed survivor of a pair that had been sent 
us from Carolina, was just getting the upper hand, in a 
fight, with a powerful dung-hill cock. It had been a long 
skrimmage, the man said, and he had " never seen a she- 
thing show such pluck " — but, just as the compliment was 
uttered, a new combatant appeared. The widowed bu'd 
had been coupled with a Northern turkey-cock, at the 
disappearance of her Carolina mate, a few wrecks before, 
and this second husband now mingled in the affray, tak- 
ing sides, however, with the rooster that was w^ell nigh 
beaten, and against his own wife and kind, the mother of 
a troop of his own well-begotten turkey-lings, feeding at 
a little distance. It was an atrocity that I had thought 
too mean for an instinct — quite below barn-yard-fowls, 
at least, who strut and have a sense of ostentation as 
spouses. But there raged the fight — a husband and a 
bully against a crestless female — who, still, proved to be 
a match for them, and was showing no sign of knocking 
under when I ran to her rescue. It was a pleasure to 
have read Miss Cooper's tribute just before, and remem- 
ber that there was a different inspiration, in the American 
air (for male breathing) a sphere or so higher. Accord- 
ing to Theodore Parker, this marks our rate of progress 
in civilization. He says :- 



406 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

" The savage is always and everywhere a lazy animal ; but yet 
he must get work done, and, for this purpose, he subdues woman, 
and makes her work for him. The first thing that man conquered 
and annexed to himself was woman. The superiority of man lies in 
three things — First, in having the largest brain ; second, a stron- 
ger arm ; and third, his harder heart. In this triple superiority, 
man compels woman to do his drudgery. He kills a moose, or a 
deer, or a large fish, and the woman must drag it home, cook and 
prepare it. In all savage lands, woman is the slave of man. The 
boor of Germany rides home on his horse, and the daughter and 
wife walk home beside him." 

* * * * ^ * 

The lady inhabitants of this neighborhood hare a 
summer convenience, which (partly by chance, perhaps) 
is more fitly arranged for their luxurious enjoyment, as 
to time and management, than would seem to belong to 
such a shortcomingdom as this our hfe. Breakfast 
leisurely over, somewhere about nine o'clock, a joyous 
bell rings across the bay, and the largest, swiftest and 
most sumptuous of all the day-boats on the river, 
the steamer Alida, comes swooping down the mirrored 
shore-line from Newburgh. You are invited (madam!) 
to go to town in a floating palace, pass four hours 
in Broadway, or where you please, and be brought back 
through the Highlands, in the enchantment of sunset. 
As you go, the shadows of the scenery will be thrown 
with artistic effect towards you, for it is morning, and the 



ladies' privileges. 40t 

boat's course is South aud East. As you return, the 
same accommodatiug shadows will fall with rosy tints of 
twilight, the other way. Both ways you will see the 
river in its utmost beauty. There is an upper and 
a lower forward-deck, luxuriously provided with seats, 
where the motion of the boat secures a breeze, thpugh 
the river be breathless. Or, there is an elegant public 
saloon and a private one, daintily cushioned and mirrored, 
where you may read or chat, with the comforts of your 
own drawing-room at home. On the chance of your 
wanting all your time in the city, so that it might 
not be convenient to dme, a hot lunch is served a half- 
hour before reaching the wharf, and you may start for 
your shopping or calls with the freshness rather of town- 
gadders than of country-folks who have come sixty miles 
down the river. The stopping-place being the foot of 
Robinson street, directly opposite the centre of the 
Park, you may be at Stewart's in five minutes, without 
hackney-coach or confusion. At 4 P. M., you return to 
your floating-palace, and glide away towards your home 
again ; and, while you pass the first twenty less pic- 
turesque miles, perhaps, in lying down upon the 
cushioned seats of the private saloon, recovering from 
your fatigues, the ten-mile labyrinth of the Highlands 
is getting ready to present you with a panorama — 
a sunset extended through a river-taua:le of zig-zag-iu": 



408 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

mountains, the splendor of which, if seen for the first 
time, would make any day memorable. From the class 
of people whom it mainly accommodates — the occupants 
of the villas on the Hudson, and the summer visitors at 
West Point and Cozzen's — the Alida seems rather to be 
making an excursion of gaiety than a passage of con- 
venience. Leaving Idlewild, as I did, a day or two ago, 
after breakfast, and getting home to tea — chatting with 
a large party of friends cither way, and seeing an 
enchanting variety of effect in river-scenery — it seemed 
scarce credible to me that I had also travelled one 
hundred and sixty miles, and taken advantage of four 
hours for leisurely attention to my business in the 
city. " If Mahomet," says a Persian poet, " had lived 
long enough to know the pleasures of Shiraz, he would 
have prayed God to make him immortal there." And, 
without wishing to be an immortal passenger in the 
AHda, I doubt whether there was ever half such an 
immortality's-worth, as her trip up and down of a 
summer's day (Broadway and all) offered to the sinners 
and shoppers of Shiraz. 

One goes to the city, at least an individual — a lump 
of sugar or a slice of lemon — but the feeling of being 
suddenly lemonaded into insignificance, on plunging into 
that busy stir, is common, I suspect, to those who 
land from a steamboat and walk towards Broadway. 



FIGS AXn PHYSIOGNOMIES. 409 

Without carin^L^- to be more seen or thought of by 
others, there is still a valuable sense privilege in havino- 
an atmosphere of one's own — the difference between 
a fig in a drum (city life), and the purple and gold 
fig, as it gives fragrance and drops honey from (country 
life) the tree. It would be a question, of course, whether 
the world is large enough to let every fig have room 
to show shape and color. Most men can only come 
to the thumb and finger of their destiny by the close 
packing where they are thought of by the thousand. 
But the instinctive preference for the space and liberty to 
be an individual, is at the bottom of the arrived-passenger 
feeling, spoken of above, and I presume the general 
dignity and self-respect of the human race are increasing 
with the improvements in steam and railroad which 
are putting country life within reach of a greater 
number. Figs and physiognomies alter alike, as to 
beauty and character, by too close indiscriminateness 
of pressure — though the meaner look is sometimes 
more valued as being more metropolitan. 



18 



410 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD 



LETTER LX. 

Newness of Junes— Effects of the Eclipse — Cows embarrassed— Nature's Ca- 
prices — Visit to West Point — ^The Salute to tiie Visiting Committee — Cadets' 
Mess-Ptoom — Professor Weir and the Gallery of Drawings— Parade — Stature 
of the Present Class of Cadets, &c., &c. 

June 10, 1S54. 

The poet said to his th lady-love, what one has 

felt like saying, perhaps, to every June as it came round, 
but certainly to this : — 

" I feel that I have loved before, 
But worshipped ne'er till now." 

So prodigally beautiful and new, and so beyond April 
expectation, has been the outburst of foliage and flowers, 
that the inferiority of previous Junes seems the only way 
to account for the intoxicating novelty of the impression. 
Nature, clad previously in textures of silk, seems now in 
almost overburthened sumptuousness under "velvets of 
three-pile." We must guano our dictionary to chronicle 
such a summer as should follow. 

The two twilights of an afternoon, that we had last 



EFFECTS OF THE ECLIPSE. 411 

week, proved that Xature can scarce give us a surfeit of 
her beauty. The regular " close of day " was a resplen- 
dent one in itself, but it was like the luxury of an encore 
in an opera, following so immediately upon the bird-roost- 
ing twilight of the eclipse — a sun of full brightness briefly 
intervening. Chancing to be taking one of my favorite 
rides during the progress of the phenomenon, I was glad 
of the opportunity to see a large extent of famiUar scenery 
in a new light — the Hudson and its Highlands dramatised, 
as it were — for the effect, throughout the gradual obscu- 
ration, was that of an atmosphere of pictorial contri- 
vance, such as a Claude Lorraine might give to a copy of 
the landscape from memory. Occasionally in England I 
have seen something of the same tender middle-tint in 
the first decline of the afternoon ; but, to our unpictu- 
resque transparency of climate, the sweet room thus 
given to the imagination is rare. The shadows were un- 
certain, the distances and elevations very much increased, 
and, the river being tranquil, each mountain was doubled 
by reflection, and looked like a cloud peaked above and 
below. I shall remember it like some wonderful paint- 
ing. 

Among the lesser influences of these disturbed paral- 
laxes and semi-diamaters, I noticed that neighbor Smith's 
cows, who gipsy up and down two or three miles of road 
during the day, started for home with full faith in twi- 



412 LETTERS FROil IDLEWII, D. 

light No. 1, doubtless very much perplexed at seeing the 
suu blaze forth again over their hope deferred swill at the 
door-step. It saved tlie old man his usual tramp to 
" hurry home them critters," though the milk-pail might 
show that there was a loss of a half-pint's-worth or so, 
of grass-plunder prematurely suspended. The birds of 
all kinds I observed were in quite a flurry — their flights 
short and disturbed, and their notes expressive of dis- 
tress. On the population along the road the efl'ect was 
less reverential than I should have anticipated.* A bit 
of smoked glass was in almost every hand, but the jok- 
ing and fun were universal — partly caused, perhaps, by the 
drolly emphasized and accented look of the general physi- 
ognomy, every nose of man, woman, and child, for five 
miles, it seemed to me, having a black tip from a rub of 
the lamp-smoke. A jolly Irishman, at one of the brick- 

* Of the popular impression of an eclipse, eactly two hundred years ago, 
Francis Berneir, thus writes, quoted by Southey : — 

*' Some bought drugs against the eclipse, others kept themselves close in the 
dark in the'r caves and their well-closed chambers, others cast themselves ia 
great multitudes into the churches ; those apprehending some malign and dan- 
gerous influence, and these believing that they were come to the last day, 
and that the eclipse would shake the foundations of nature and overturn it, 
notwithstanding anything that Gassendis, Robervals, and many other famous 
pliilosophers could say or write against this persuasion, when they demon- 
strate that this eclipse was of the same nature with so many others that had 
preceded without any mischief, and that it was a known accident, foreseen 
and ordinary, which had nothing peculiar." 



ALL ^V I X G TO THE ECLIPSE. 413 

yards, twitched off his hat as I came along, and raised a 
great laugh among the Paddies by taking a look through 
it at me — but he forgot, that, for an eclipse of the Sun 
or any other gentleman, there must be a lady (fair Dian) 
between him and the world. And, by the way (to ask a 
Woman's-Rights question), is it a mark of the superiority 
of our sex, or not, that the Sun may have four eclipses 
a year and the Moon only two ? What does it argue, 
that, among celestial bodies, as in good society on earth, 
they are thus twice as strict with the ladies ? 

As a nail whereon to hang some of our unaccountable- 
nesses, an eclipse is useful. It is owing to the eclipse, of 
course, that the oak and cedar seem to have a disease this 
year — buds blighted and both families of trees leafing very 
reluctant and poor. The hemlocks, on the contrary, with 
their unprecedented profusion of ghttering tassel-tips, 
look as if gold had rained on them. Corn has had no 
chance with such a cold Spring— potatoes and turnips, 
on the other hand, profiting greatly by it. There are 
those who have had unexpected blessings, those who have 
had unexpected calamaties— all alke owing to the 
eclipse. According to Gloster, in King Lear, however, 
it is only evils that can be thus accounted for. He 
says : — 

'' These late eclipses ia the sun and moon portend no good to 
us : though the wisdom of nature can reason thus and thus, yet 



414 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD, 

nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, 
friendship falls off, brothers divide : in cities, mutinies ; in coun- 
tries, discord ; in palaces treason, and the bond crushed between 
son and father." 

We certainly have had more violent freshets, slides, tem- 
pests, and irregularities of nature, hereabouts, within the 
last Winter and Spring, than the oldest inhabitant re- 
members the like of. Almost every operation of season 
and weather seems to have been either stronger or duller 
than usual — hardly anything in the old familiar way. 
But the wonderful rapidity with which June has over- 
taken and surpassed the lagging season, within a week, 
shows that the compensating influences are at work. The 
etlipse is over. 

* * ^f * * * 

Fifteen minutes from Idlewild to West Point at 
9 A. M., by the swift Alida, on her way to New York 
— the grand annual review of the Cadets, with their 
military music and cannonading, for the Government 
Board of Visitors, to come off at twelve — the Ahda, on 
her return, to bring us home through the Highlands, 
at sunset, in fifteen minutes of still more splendid parade 
of sky and water — and all on the first of June, that one 
day of the year when it was never known to rain since 
the memory of man — no ! there was no refusing, to 
a bold little pleader of six years old, the promise that I 



THE QUAKERS AND MARTIAL GLORY. 415 

" looidd go^ He was happy. But that was not all of 

it for so was I. The sweetness — oh, the sweetness 1 

of an excuse to be a child again for a summer's day. 

As usual, June the 1st dawned like a morning of 
Eden. It was one of those days when the curse of 
Adam's fall (industry or no happiness) was suspended, or 
altogether optional. In such weather there was no need 
to have anything to do. To be was enough. Calm, 
cloudless, elastic, pleasant in the sunshine or out of 
it, balmy to breathe and brilliant to look around — 
may we say, unprofanely, that we trust God for the like, 
after death ? It would be almost impious, it seems to 
me, to pray for " another and better world" on such a 
morning. 

The Alida came along, loaded with Quakers on their 
way down to the Annual Meeting of their Sect of Peace 
— a chance parenthesis to my day of military curiosity, 
which I felt to be a (?) as to the propriety of thus 
sowing a filibuster-seed in the imagination of my boy. 
Fifteen minutes is short time to repent, however. We 
were at the wharf, with a soldier on guard, before I had 
looked the idea fairly in the face ; and the triumph of 
military engineering, which had given us a new^ road, 
like the Simplon, up the front of a cliff, made its begin- 
ning of the day's warlike captivatiou. That new pier 
and its road, joining the highway of the river, instead of 



416 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

the old wharf so incoQveniently round a corner, are in 
accordance with the open-door spirit of the day — the 
policy at West Point having hitherto been, to entrench 
and seclude it from public access. The proposed road 
along the river-bank to Newburgh (to bring the military 
town within reach of a market, and open its parades to 
the drives of the surrounding country) was smothered by 
Secretary Marcy on the caterpillar policy, I believe ; l^ut 
we look to hhn for its resuscitation, now that he is 
through with his chrysalis, and thinks a little more far- 
sightedly, on the wing. 

An omnibus did the climbing for us, to the summit- 
level of the parade-ground ; and, from that omnibus door, 
as we gradually ascended, the view down through a 
crowd of mountains, upon a river with a fleet of sloops 
threaded by the flying Alida * * * * 

But we came to see soldiers, and I will try to say 
nothing of scenery. Only — if one's unlimited delight may 
speak a word as it goes to its dungeon of silence — the 
reader should run no risk of dying without a visit to this 
spot of Nature's most wanton extravagance of beauty. 
Leave no love nor wonder, no tenderness nor taste at 
home, clear reader ! You will want all you can be, do, 
borrow or imagine, for exquisite and enthusiastic delight 
and appreciation, at West Point on a summer's day. Oh, 
the * * * * 



THE SALUTE. 417 

And now that the key is turned on that intoxicated 
gentleman, let us have a cool look for a cadet, or some- 
thing with which Nature has nothing to do. This range 
of cannon (the passing oiBcer tells us) is to fire a salute, 
presently, for the Board of Visitors on their way to the 
public buildings. And here comes a file of cadets from 
the college, to man the guns, and we will take a seat upon 
this big rock and see the manceuvering. 

The tight, little gray coats, with their epauletted cap- 
tain, had a few minutes' exercise in wheeling, advancing 
and loading the pieces of ordnance, and then the nine 
gentlemen in plain coats whom the powder was to honor, 
were seen coming from the hotel, escorted (and, as a 
matter of mere visibility, contradictorily eclipsed) by the 
Colonel in command and the military Professors. The 
heavy guns were handled like playthings by the cadets, 
nothing going wrong but two or three of the percussion- 
caps that missed fire — possibly from opposite politics, to 
the Nebraskau party under salute. (Or, the percussion 
might have been Democratic enough, and the powder 
Whig — a failure of a gun to go olT by disaffection of 
party, which would never occur, of course, with shot in 
the charge or anything to hit.) The echoes, I presently 
discovered, were the answers to those pulled strings for 
which my wondering little companion gave the Crptain 
the most credit. They reverberated back from the 

18* 



418 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I L D . 

mountains in three peals, the last coming from the Storm 
King with a long, low roll like the most distant thunder 
(as measured by the watch of a gentleman who stood 
near us, two seconds between the first peal of echoes and 
the second, ten between the second and the third). 
Those cannons' voices impressed me curiously — as the first 
time I had ever heard our familiar mountains adequately 
spoken to ! It was, certainly, the first time I had ever 
heard them answer. Human utterance does not seem to 
corroborate our claim as lords of creation, stoutly as we 
assert it ; and I shall have my own misgivings on the 
subject, I fear, now that I have heard these twenty-four- 
pounders, until I can speak to the mountains and get 
some sort of civil answer, as they do. 

The cadets' mess-room (for we had several friends 
among the professors, and had fallen into the procession 
of visitation) is in a very imposing new building of 
Norman architecture, which " tells " admirably on the 
scenery in which it is placed, and is heightened by it, in 
turn, with most embellishing foreground and background. 
The interior looked simple and serviceable. Table was 
laid for dinner, and we took a guess at the weight of the 
singularly massive china plates that were set — manufac- 
tured especially for cadet use and contingency. One 
professor thought a plate might w^eigh two pounds, 
another three. But if intended, as it probably was, to 



W E § T POINT GALLERY. 419^ 

show what tlic supporter for a soldier's food (or the 
bottom of his stomach) should be like, it is certainly of 
sturdy promise for a campaign. The small round seats 
of cast-iron were of similar significance. War, if these 
are to be believed, needs tough stomachs and unsuscep- 
tible sittings down. 

The library, the laboratory, the lecture-rooms, and 
gallery of drawings, were duly visited, and the public 
knows how serviceably and skilfully complete are this 
admirable institution's practical machineries of knowledge. 
The drawings only were a complete surprise to me. I 
knew how essential it was, of course, that a soldier should 
have a true eye, and understand distance and effect, size, 
action and color ; but it had not occurred to me, that, in 
learning these scientific steps of art, he must needs follow 
the progression of an artist. The framed drawings by 
the cadets, in that gallery, while they show a most 
thorough schooling of the eye, would do credit to any 
school of artists in the world. Professor Weir, himself a 
master among painters, has satisfactory proof thus to 
offer of the zeal and efficiency of the science he teaches ; 
but it is also a most pleasant evidence of his inspiring 
such a zeal in his pupils as to accomplish even more than 
the mechanism of art — its taste and ornamental execu- 
tion. 

Soldiers have to learn to be a great many things — 



420 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD, 

chambermaids among others ; and the Representation of 
the Government, in whose train we had the honor to be 
walking, were to jndge, of course, of the proficiency of 
the cadets in bed-making and general Pollyology. The 
"barracks" are a handsome new structure, and divided 
into those '' bed-rooms for two,'' of the comforts and 
crockery of which, the undergraduate heroes have the 
exclusive care. As the colonel and his staff, and the 
honorable visiters walked along the entries, doors were 
thrown open, and the auto-broom-haudling and slop-see- 
ings-after, as executed by the one of the two young 
soldiers who was the alternate Polly of the morning, were 
oftered to oflBcial inspection. We looked in, with the 
rest. Really, neatness and order could no farther go ! 
I noticed but two peculiarities — (in addition, I mean, to 
a most martinet scantiness of superfluities) — first, that 
by male and military chamber-maiding, no coverlet petti- 
coats were allowed to fall over the naked iron legs of the 
bedsteads, and over the one pair of shoes that stood in 
solitary readiness for action under each bed ; and, second, 
that the mattrass, as an article that could have no possi- 
bility of day-duty, was rolled snugly up to the bolster, 
out of temptation's way. Altogether, one gets the 
impression that glory is more tidy and scant than he had 
supposed, in looking at this as the training of it. I had 
expected two towels to a hero, at least — among other 



APPEARANCE OF THE CADETS. 421 

disappointments. And, as for Monterey and Baena Yista 
on one tooth-brush ! but these are considerations for the 
honorable board's more statistical Report to Congress. 

"Visits over, the parade came ofif at noon. How beau- 
tiful it was, on that green plateau, with sunshine, music, 
and June leaves, mountains and ladies looking on, Cuba 
and Canada in the distance, and a sumptuous collation 
expecting us at the colonel's house, immediately in the 
rear — I leave to the reader's fancy, with thus much of 
mention. A word or two only, before closing, upon 
points which my child-companion probably did not take 
in — with his ice-cream at the colonel's, and his bewildered 
dehght and astonishment, swallowed immediately before. 

Stature seems- to go by periods. There was an age, 
the histories tell us, when all the great heroes and states- 
men of the world were small men. The cadets, at "West 
Point at present, are, it is said, unusually tall. They are, 
of course, nationally thin. But the contrast between 
their agile and wiry look, and the bluff and plump 
aspect of the cadets of Addiscomb in England (whom I 
remember from having once passed a month in the neigh- 
borhood of that military college, seeing the parades and 
exercises every day), would foreshow a natural and 
trying antagonism between the two. To my eye, the 
personal build and bearing of our own young graycoats 
could scarcely be improved upon, for endurance and 



422 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

action. They came here, doubtless, by that pick for the 
profession which ensures that they were the best among 
their playfellows for the appointment — but a more 
indomitable and reliable-looking a set of young customers 
for the enemy, need not be kept ready. And there is a 
singularly cool and thoughtful absence of swell and 
filibuster about them. It is the quiet manliness of air which 
belongs to fearlessness, with skill and knowledge. Their 
model is a high one — the Commandant, Colonel Lee, 
being, certainly, in feature, mien, and manners, the perfec- 
tion of what they should study for a soldier. He (with 
the family of Washington whose honors he inherits) is 
well represented, by the way, among the cadets them- 
selves, his son, a well-built and gallant-looking fellow, 
being at the head of the graduating class. 

I had something to say of Weir's studio, which we 
visited in the course of the day — and of the charming 
drive to Cozzens's which we took with the agreeable 
gentlemen of the Board of Visitors, towards evening — and 
of Roe and his paradise of a summer hotel — and of the sun- 
set return by the Alida, which came duly along with her 
usual crowd of well-bred company on board, and among 
them the far-famed Lieutenant Strain, and Headley the 
vehement historian — and of my boy's gradual digestion of 
Ms day of transcendent novelty and happiness — of these 
and some more things I could be communicative, possibly 



A PLEASING PROMISE. 423 

instructive. But we will let the reader draw breath. To 
one of the omitted topics, at least — Weir's beautiful 
pictures — I shall please the reader by promising to turn, 
hereafter. 



424 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I I D . 



LETTER LXI 

Adventure with a Snapping-Turtle — Wild black Cat, and other quadruped 
Bandits — ^Visit to a Revolutionary Soldier — Venerable Companion — Privations 
of the Ai-niy — Washington's features, &c., Ac. 

June 24, 1854. 

How we become acquainted with new neighbors is 
sometimes an event to ourselves. Coming home from a 
long gallop, yesterday, I had gradually drawn rein (to 
prolong the luxury of the last mile in the heaven of a 
June sunset), when, by the communicative ears of my 
mare, I was informed of something worth noticing in the 
road, I looked ahead. So near home, one is a little 
slow to be astonished ; but Lady Jane had not pricked 
up her telegrapliic signals for a mere feminine love of 
news. There was a monster in the way. A moving 
house, with the six members of its family hanging clear 
out of the windows — the head, tail and legs of a tortoise, 
of the like of which I had never before seen a specimen, 
with its belongings all outside like Barnum's elephant, 
whose legs and trunk may be seen for nothing, though he 
walks from town to town with a barn around him — stood 



A S N A P P I N G - T U R T L E . 425 

directly in the track. A common turtle my friend Morris 
had mercifully removed from the carriage road, uear the 
house, a day or two before ; and the children every day 
bring in those little unresisting Quakers, with their toes 
and fingers drawn in to wait our pleasure — but this was 
a very different customer. The broad rim of my hat 
would not have taken in his entire outline, and his big 
shell might have stirred the envy of an alderman — evi- 
dently a bony paunch which he had the power of vacating 
altogether of its vital organs, to make room for his din- 
ner. It was a snapping-turtle, in fact — but, let me anti- 
cipate a little, by quoting what Natural History says of 
the species : — 

*' The snapper (^E. Serpentina) has been separated by some 
authors from emys, on account of the small size of the sternum 
which serves very imperfectly to conceal the head and members. 
It is found from New England to Florida, is very voracious, and 
destroys great quantities of fish. The shell is more or less tri- 
carinate ; the head, neck, limbs and tail are very large, the latter 
strongly crested. From the form of its body, it is called, in the 
Southern States, alligator tortoise. It bites severely, and will 
seize anything presented to it, and sometimes will not let go its 
hold, even after the head is severed from the body. It attains 
large dimensions. Individuals have been met with, cxceediug four 
feet and a half in total length.-' 

The difference of a piano-forte, with or without its legs, 



426 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

was the difference between my previous impression of a 
turtle and the one before me. The shell of the animal, 
which was about two feet in length, stood well lifted 
from the mud, and he would apparently walk over an 
egg without breaking it. The head followed my move- 
ments, the little green eyes venomously intent on me, 
and, as my restless mare fretted around him, his tail 
acted like a scull-oar, assisting his legs in working about 
so as to keep head on to the enemy. 

It appeared, as I looked at him, that a wheel of some 
light vehicle had left a mud-mark across the reptile's 
back, and, by his continuing in the road, he did not 
know enough to profit by his experience. He was in a 
fair way to be run over again, and by a heavier wagon ; 
and it was but neighborly, of course, to put him beyond 
danger. I dismounted and turned him on his back, by a 
sudden lift with my foot, but he whipped over on his legs 
again with the quickness of a torpedo, and, by a second 
jump, seized me at the ankle. I just felt the scrape of 
his toothless mandibles ; but, though my skin was not 
included in the bite, my boot and trouser were ; and, for 
a moment, it looked as if I must cut loose with a pen- 
knife or mount and ride home with a pendant snapping- 
turtle for a spur. He loosed his hold to prepare for a 
snap at Lady Jane, however, who was prancing danger- 
ously near his toes meantime, and so I stood clear — once 



A DISAPPOINTED EPICURE. 421 

more reminded of what are this world's reciprocities for 
acts of kindness and mercy. 

This kind of turtle is good eating, and, on my arriving 
at home and mentioning the encounter to Bell (my lesser- 
anxiety man), he started on a full run for the spot, 
anticipating a delicacy for his supper. But the gentle- 
man (or rather the lady, for he said it was doubtless a 
female on her way up from the marsh to lay her eggs in 
the bushes on the hill-side), had made the best of the ten 
minutes to get away. I asked him how he would have 
brought her home without a weapon first to dispatch her ; 
and he said (what I think it may be useful to record for 
inexperienced captors of snapping-turtles) that he should 
have watched his chance to seize her by the tail. Once 
lifted clear of the ground, the jumping animal may be 
carried as easily as a carpet-bag. 

I find that two of this same family were dug out from 
our muck-meadow last year, and eaten without mention ; 
so that Idlewild has probably its tenantry of snapping- 
turtles — awkward vicinage, perhaps, for such stray poets 
as throw themselves 

" Prone on the grass in rapturous reverie ;" 

particularly, as the reptile, half buried in clover and 
buttercups, would look very like a flat stone whereon to 
rest an elbow or sit dry. Brother scribblers and idlers 



428 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

are hereby cautioned against unexpected hostilities in 
places of rest. 

Our veto upon guns and hunting-dogs has multiplied 
the game to a wonderful extent within these wild limits, 
but I find that animals of prey (perhaps snappiug-turtles 
among them) are attracted to the spot by the same 
immunity, or by what it protects. The glen is a fastness 
of caves and precipices, and (the house barely overhang- 
ing its depths), there is but an easy scramble of two 
hundred feet between the fox's hole and our poultry yard. 
Turkey after turkey has disappeared, leaving but claws 
or bloody feathers to tell the tale, and a rabbit's foot 
here, or a squirrel's tail there, shows daily that our 
sacred asylum for these innocent and happy races is 
stealthily profaned. Among other quadruped bandits, 
curiously enough, is a black cat, who has been tempted 
by the abundance of the birds and other game, and has 
evidently abandoned kitchen dependence and civilisation, 
to live a savage life altogether in the glen. We get 
glimpses of her every day, in rambling about, and, occa- 
sionally, she passes very near, not at all disturbed by 
human approach ; but, after seeing a brilliant oriole in 
her claws the other day, I mentally pronounced her an 
outlaw. We must have a fox-hunt before long, in which 

the doom of the black cat must be included. 

****** 



L I F E - G U A R D S M A N . 429 

Our nigbland neighborhood prides itself on tlie masto- 
don, disinterred among its hills, and the memorials of 
Washington, so long here, and at such a tryiug period 
with his array. Science and history must take us in their 
way. Perhaps even Mr. Barnum, too, would give us a 
reconnoitering call, if lie should hear, that, among other 
belongings of the Father of Independence, his '^ usual 
nap'^ still survives among us, as well as his tea-kettle 
and arm-chair. Such is the fact — if the ear alone is to 
be trusted with a word. Usual Knapp is the curious 
name of the only surviving member of Washington's Life- 
Guard, an old man of ninety-five years of age, here 
resident, and still hearty and active. And the circum- 
stance with which he is commonly mentioned gives a 
promise of his still lasting longer — a habit, which he has 
kept up for the eight or nine years that he has now been 
a widower, of celebrating his own birthday by a call on 
all the widows of the country round about. 

The portrait of this venerable " revolutionary," which 
hangs among the relics in the old mansion known as 
Washington's Head-Quarters, at Newburgh, had started 
a question as to his whereabout ; and we were surprised 
to discover that he was residing on just the other side of 
the mountain which we see from our western window — a 
brother farmer, within ten or twelve miles of Idlewild. 
This was starthng vicinity for a still unsnapped link with 



430 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

an age gone by, and to drive over and see the old man 
on the first fair day, was the promise of an excursion that 
might even lay a rose leaf on the full cup of a June 
mornino*. 

I have spoken «nce or twice in these letters of our 
venerable next neighbor. Friend S., the quaker, whose 
white locks and soul-calm tranquillity of mien and fea- 
tures are among the most precious and beautiful of 
the accustomed pictures in our secluded grounds. To 
him also it was a surprise to learn that so interesting a 
person as Usual Knapp was still living, and within visit- 
ing distance, and he willingly agreed to make one of the 
party. His company had the additional value to us, that 
it would bring together two whose eyes had been familiar 
with the form of Washington, Friend S. (now eighty 
years of age), having been a boy in the neighborhood 
when the head-quarters were here, and seeing the great 
man almost daily. 

The rural township to which we were bound is called 
Little Britain, and the atmosphere, on the morning of 
our excursion (June 16th), was of that occasional sum- 
mer haze which gives our hard and clear landscape the 
softer effect of that of England. There would have been 
a third reminder of the parent country, in the sign of the 
old tavern, representing General George Washington 
leading the British lion by a chain — but that remarkable 



THE "SMOTIIERER." 431 

iminting is now removed. The highly cultivated fields of 
this part of our couuty of eggs and butter, looked very 
English, in the veiled sunshine. The cattle were English 
— Devon cows in every pasture. A belonging of our 
own native scenery was suddenly missed, as we descended 
from the gap in the ridge of Snake Hill— the thick cedars 
which Ime the walls on every road of Highland terrace. 
With the change of the soil, in passing the bowl-rim of 
mountains that shuts us in, the nourishment for this 
invaluable tree evidently ceases, and I had not realized 
before how fortunate we are in having such superb spon- 
taneous avenues for the public roads, on our romantic 
ten-mile terrace. 

At the gate of a small and uupainted farm cottage, 
on the side of a hill, I tied up my warm ponies, and, as 
the front porch showed no sign of life, we took the garden 
way to the back-door. Here we were met by a middle- 
aged lady, whose face we could but partially see, for she 
had on one of those smothercrs, or hoods, which all our 
country girls wear till they have got through with their 
work in the morning — this useful article hanging, for the 
rest of the day, on a nail by the kitchen-door, ready to 
be slipped on whenever there is an errand to the barn, or 
whenever the hair is to be protected from dust, or the 
features from unwished for observation. Probably no 
passing stranger ever saw the face of an American girl 



432 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

while she was milking the cows, or weeding the carrot- 
patch. 

The parlor blinds were thrown open, chairs placed, 
and the kindest of welcomes given us, by this disguised 
lady in her smotherer, and then, saying that her father 
would be in presently, she disappeared, to be seen no 
more for that visit.* The old man was at work in his 
garden, but his slow steps were soon heard, and he 
entered the room, throwing his hat upon the floor at one 
side of the threshold, and his stick at the other. With a 
smile on his face and both hands open, he came forward 
to greet the strangers. He was tall and bent, but evi- 
dently of the lithe and symmetrical build which was like- 
liest to attain his present age of ninety-five. His head 
and features were exceedingly fine. A sculptor would 
have modelled a Caesar from them, a half century ago. 
Frankness, cordiahty, and self-confident simplicity, were 
marked in his expression of face, voice, and manners. 

Yery deaf, he drew our chairs very near him ; and, 
with his right hand on the leg of Friend S., and his left 
hand on mine, he made himself acquainted with our names 
and professions. The group chanced to be a curious 

* In a drive over •which I have since taken, to give my wife the pleasure of 
seeing the honored veteran, we had the good fortune to see one of the ladies, 
and were very much delighted with her inheritance of countenance and man- 
ners. She is, indeed, a worthy daughter of a sire such as republics depend on. 



OLD-TIME REMINISCENCES. 433 

ladder of ages — my boy of six years of age, his father, 
aud his grandfather (Mr. Grinnell of New Bedford), the 
octogenarian Friend S., and the almost centarian we had 
come to visit — five stages of a century, in a circle intent 
upon honoring and listening to the oldest. And what a 
wilderness of deeds and dinners, to fill up the interval 
between the first round of that ladder aud the last ! 
With all the success and honor of the three rounds above 
me, I must say it seemed rather a climh. My conscious 
likelihood of not coming to the next had a relief in it, 
like the crossed-out item in a bill. 

The two old men, with the long gray locks of their 
two beautiful heads laid close together, soon got to com- 
paring their reminiscences of Washington — the subject 
we were the most interested in bringing about. Friend 
S. related how the boys used to be called out of school 
when the commander-in-chief was seen to be coming along 
the road on horseback, and how dignified and noble he 
looked, as he rode past with his hat off, courteously 
returning the low-bowed salutation of the lads. He said 
also, that he now lived in the house Lafayette occupied 
at that time, at the junction of the Moodna with the 
Hudson ; and then they refreshed their memories with 
the story of the Irishman who undertook to carry the 
marquis across that stream on his back, and dropped 

him into the water — a possibility of an intention to drown 

19 



434 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

the popular officer, wliidi made the Irisliman so detested 
that he was obliged to leave the neighborhood. 

But the old sergeant's description of the parade of the 
life-guard every morning before the mansion of head- 
quarters, and the look of the general as he slowly walked 
up and down the portico, '' straight as a dart and noble' 
as he could be," was the most glowing of all. They 
'' had the three best di'ummers in the army," he said, and 
" they made such music that it took you right off your 
feet." It entirely straightened the old man's spine to 
talk of it. He sat bolt upright, and the squeeze of his 
bony fingers upon my leg could not have been much 
looser than the one with which he "charged bayonet" 
at the battle of Monmouth. He said he remembered a 
verbal order Washington gave him, at that time — not to 
present arms or take notice of him when he was alone. 
" He was a man of few words," he said, " and never 
familiar with anybody." He repeated a story he had 
once before told to Headley the historian, of his having 
seen Washington dodge a spent ball that passed close to 
his head on the battle-field, and his smiling immediately, 
as if at his unsoldierlike weakness in doing so, and turn- 
ing to his officers with the remark, '' Ah, the frailty of 
poor human nature !" 

Of the General's dress he gave us a minute description. 
Mrs. Washington, he said, was with him at Xewburgh, 



K E V O L L' T I O N A K Y INCIDENTS. 435 

but " she was older than the General, and not a handsome 

woman." Of General Knox, who was stationed at West 

Point, and of the wonderful beauty of Mrs. Knox, his 

mention was very enthusiastic. Knox was a " large 

splendid man." The sergeant was often employed to go 

with a boat to the Point, and bring General and Mrs. 

Knox to dine with General Washington. He was once 

ordered by the imperious officer to land at a certain place 

where he knew it was too shallow. He remonstrated, but 

Knox insisted. So they obeyed and ran into the mud, 

and were obliged to sit in the boat till the tide rose to 

take them off ; and the delay was very provoking at the 

time. 

The old soldier gave us a thrilling description of the 
privations of the army in its forced march to the South. 
It was the wettest season ever known, and he had not a 
dry thread on him for weeks, but he never took cold. 
The rations were next to starvation — often a dried herring 
a day, and no bread. At the battle of Monmouth every 
man in his company was shot, he himself received no 
wound then, or in the other actions he was in, during the 
war, except a slight graze of a ball on the back of his left 
hand. The old man's feelings got the better of him once 
or twice in narrating the stirring scenes in which he had 
borne a part, and he " choked off" — but it evidently gave 
him great pleasure to recall them. He said he had no 



436 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

memory for thiugs, now, but be could remember every- 
thing that happened then, as if it were yesterday. He 
enlisted at the age of sixteen, and was in the army six 
years. Since the disbanding, at the Peace, he has been 
a farmer, taking no part in the war of 1812. His wife 
died eight years ago, at the age of seventy-nine, and his 
two only children (daughters, one of whom assists in the 
support of her father, by dress-making), live with him. 
His pension of ten dollars a month is much too little — for 
his merits, I should think, as well as for his wants. 

To see those two men, to whose eyes Washington's 
living features and form have been familiar — sitting 
together, and talking of him with their eyes bent upon 
each other's faces, yet each seeing the memory-picture of 
the great man, as he talked or listened — gave a strange 
impetus to the imagination, a new one to me, for the 
conceiving of what Washington was, as he breathed and 
acted. It was the Present turned back to the Past, in the 
magician's mirror. As we drove home, I felt as if we 
were returning from a place where we had seen times 
gone by, — though my horses, by the unusual length of the 
drive and the delay in their dinners, doubtless thought it 
more like a stretch into the Future. 



F O U R T n OF JULY. 431 



LETTER LXII. 

Celebration of the Fourth of July by Children-Procession through the Grounds 
of Idlewild-Song by the Children-Their Pic-nic in the Grove-Speeches, 

&c., &c. 

July S, 1S54. 

On- the morning of the Fourth of July, a hundred 
CHILDREN', chanting a hymn, walked in procession down 
the hemlock avenue of Idlewild, led by their Sabbath- 
school teachers, and followed by their parents and friends. 
They were bound to our shaded meadow-glade (at the 
outlet where the two glens, Funnychild and its wilder 
brother, run their torrents into one), to celebrate the day 
with a pic-nic on the grass. It had been intimated by 
our friend Mr. Eoe, the principal teacher, that it would 
o-ratify the children to be received first at the house, 
taking our family into their musical procession as they 
should afterwards go upon their way ; and hence the 
beautiful picture which we now saw across the lawn— the 
long array of children along its rising curve making the 
centre of a landscape, with the Storm-King and a sum- 
mer-sky lifting beyond, very much as the glowing pencU 
of Dc la Roche would have contrived and painted it. 



438 LETTERS F R .A[ I D L E V\- I L D . 

The lijinn ceased as they readied the portico, and we 
welcomed the gaily-dressed troop, distributing them 
about through the four or five open rooms, and enjoining 
full liberty upon their feet and eyes, with such access to 
pitchers of water as would sustain their Glorious Fourth- 
ification till the more substantial refreshment basketed in 
the meadow below. Pictures and statuary were new to 
most of the little mountaineers, and our wilderness of 
trifles (more rococo than costly) seemed to fully absorb 
their curiosity — one bright boy, whom I noticed, standing 
with open mouth before a marble shepherdess lying in 
nude slumber beside her crook, apparently pleased, though 
surprised, to find that the loveliness of unclad innocence 
was a matter of drawinj>:-room admiration. A hundred 
children cannot but have a thick sprinkle of beauty ; and, 
standing in our central hall, and looking around upon the 
four rooms crowded with their joyous faces, I could not 
resist that sort of submerged feeling — the kind of emo- 
tional half-drown — with which the soul gets out of its 
depth in sudden admiration. Nature prepares so many, 
to be beautiful and noble 1 The children of the poor are 
so apt to look as if the rich would have been over-blest 
with such ! Alas for the angel capabilities, interrupted 
so soon with care, and with after life so sadly unfulfilled I 

A very old woman, leaning on her long rough stick, 
and drawn from her bed of rheumatism by the stir of the 



C 11 I L D - M U S I c . 439 

day, had liobbled in among the rest ; and the large troop 
of the children's friends numbered several gray heads, and 
two who were eighty years of age — so that we had no 
lack of such contrast as artist and moralist equally 
admire. The half-hour to which the teachers had limited 
the visit was to me a magical revealing of what our 
mountain-scenery hides among its rocks and leafy woods, 
and I shall see the broad sweep of the landscape with 
more understanding eyes hereafter. We know now what 
life is astir in the covered pulses of those romantic hills. 

The procession re-formed in the pine grove which over- 
hangs the glen, in the rear of the house ; and, as we, and 
the city guests who chanced to be with us, fell in, they 
took up the song of " Little Things " — a very touching 
one, by the way, which, though much thumbed in Sab- 
bath-school literature, is well worth copying for the more 
general reader. Thus sang the hundred child-voices, as 
they wound away : — 

Little drops of water, 

Little grains of sand, 
Make the mighty ocean, 

And the beauteous land. 

And the little moments, 

Humble though they be, 
Make the mighty ages 

Of eternity. 



440 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD, 

So our little errors 

Lead the soul away 
From the paths of virtue. 

Oft in sin to stray. 

Little deeds of kindness, 

Little words of love, 
Make our esurth an Eden, 

Like the heaven above. 

Great things have less stirred pine-tassels and me I 

With a moment's interruption from a sudden onslaught 
upon the procession made by Don, our wilful Xewfouud- 
land, who poured his thundering bass into the treble 
chorus as they neared the stable (following it up with his 
excited legs and tail, like a mad organist carried away 
with the music, and plunging over upon the congregation 
to add himself to the swell of the dogs-ology) — with this 
brief interruption, the many little singers wound their 
way down the ravine. All gayly dressed as they were, in 
white and bright colors, it was a startlingly new and 
bright thread drawn through that winding road, and 
gleaming in and out among the trees and around the pre- 
cipices and rocks — probably more beautiful to our eyes 
from our being accustomed to it as a solitude. It was a 
stage whose lifted curtain had hitherto shown us a 
brilliant scene, but to which were now added the figures 
of the play. Human beings improve scenery — spite of 



T II E 1' I C- X I c . 441 

the geologist s theory that mankind are incidental, and 
not necessary, to the destiny of this our planet 

Upon the steep instep of the mountain's projected 
foot, which divides the two glens of Idlewild and Funny- 
child, the children grouped themselves under the trees, as 
if among the columns of an ascending gallery, while the 
old people and the visitors and friends reclined beneath 
the spreading hemlocks of the meadow-glade below. 
Architecture could scarcely have contrived a better 
arrangement of a congregation for seeing and listening. 
The long table covered with eatables, in a darkly-shaded 
thicket on the brook-bank, promised to " bring down the 
gallery," when the services should be over, and the 
unfenced perspectives under the trees, stretching away 
indistinctly on either side, offered labyrinthine rambles to 
any who should choose solitude after the feast. It 
looked like a picture of a Happy Valley — so happy, 
at least, as to be altogether out of harmony with 
that cold hymn to Indifference : — 

" Half-pleased, contented I will be — 
Content but half to please." 

The address and prayer by the village clergyman were 
followed by a Sabbath-school song, and then came the 
reading of the Declaration of Independence — that 
faultless language-temple of Liberty, which brings the 
soul to its knee with the mere recognition of its truth, 

19* 



442 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

strength, and beauty. What thoughts, and what lan- 
guage ! It should be written on school-walls, and 
graven on entablatures behind the platforms for orators, 
and be largely legible wherever public assemblies must 
gaze and read — for, till its rock-hewn sentences are for- 
gotten, not to be free were to be ashamed. 

Our venerable neighbor, Friend S. (whom the children 
love, far and near), stood up with his white locks, and 
was eagerly listened to, for a few minutes ; and our 
guest, Mr. Charles Butler, made a l^rief and very effec- 
tive address ; and Mr. Roe, the principal of the admira- 
ble boys'-school near by, went straight to the child-level 
of perception, with his usual tact, in a playful speech. 
One general hymn wound up the gravities of the day. 

The history of the gaieties — the subsequent descent 
upon the ginger-nuts and sandwiches — is too active for 
my contemplative pen. The subject outruns me. In 
fact, my own dinner was awaiting me, about that time, 
on the precipice two hundred feet above ; and, though 
the echoes of the shouts and merry laughter came to our 
ears as we sat at table, and we could see the glimmer of 
the white dresses and gay ribbons among the far-down 
trees, looking out of our windows, from time to time, 
during the afternoon, I did not again join the merry 
little republicans. They were happy. And they asso- 
ciated that happiness with the celebration of their coun- 



THE N A T I X ' S FESTIVAL. 443 

try's great day of Liberty. They will remember the one 
by the other. And, certainly, Idlewild can be no better 
honored than by an acceptance of its welcome — next 
year and thenceforward — to celebrate, under the shade 
of its spreading trees, the festival so full of blessing and 
meaning. 



444 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 



LETTER LXIIL 

Government of the American Homestead — Republic in the Country, but not in 
the City — Aristocracy of upper Servants not tolerated — Each Individual's 
Self-Esteem to be cared for — Irish lad in hi.s progress in Americanizing — 
Difficulty of other Servants allowing a Head Man, &c., &c. 

July 2fi, 1854. 

The oligarchy of a small homestead is not without its 
questions of embarrassing policy. The children and the 
other members of our little Government at Idlewild are at 
a stand-still, which the White House at Washington 
could scarcely show the like of, discussion having come to 
a momentous crisis as to the social position and destiny 
of Don the dog. 

The first act of this Quixotic Newfoundland — attacking 
the vast water-wheel of our neighbor the miller — was 
indulgently attributed to a rustic ignorance. But his 
subsequent conduct has shown it to have sprung from an 
eccentricity of character unsusceptible of domestic disci- 
pline and obligations. With all the majestic beauty of 
his race, he is strangely deficient in their usual docility, 
and particularly in their attachment to children and 



DON THE CULPRIT. 445 

mucli prized inexhaustibleiiess of patience. He has 
repeatedly bitten his little playfellows, and with each 
repeated chaiuiug-up aud whipping, we have hoped it 
would be the last transgression. But, a week or more 
since, a friend from New York called upon us, with his 
two boys who are at a school in the neighborhood, 
accompanied by a son of Professor Weir, who is also a 
pupil. Don walked into the group, as they sat upon the 
portico, and, while young Weir laid his hand confidingly 
between the open jaws of the dog, one of the other boys 
gave a sudden twist to the tail. A furious growl and a 
savage mangle of the hand in his mouth was the imme- 
diate consequence — the fine boy showing where he had 
been cradled (at West Point) by keeping an unchanged 
smile upon his face, and contending for the extrication of 
his hand like a little gladiator. 

Now, though small dogs are comparatively irrespon- 
sible in the country, big dogs have their rural '' fire and 
brimstone." The treadmill churn of the nearest farm is 
open to transgressors — many a pound of fresh butter in 
Orange county being the work of sinner-power thus 
exemplarily turned to account. I had a soft place in my 
own heart for the Don. He had made me the one object 
of his affections from the day of his arrival — a prefererce 
he would never be fed, nor coaxed, nor whipped out of — 
happy only under some window where he could hear me 



446 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

cough, savagely jealous of my horse, and drawing happi- 
ness enough through a crack, apparently, if permitted to 
lie all day outside my study door. Whichever way 
metempsychosis might make room for the imagination — 
whether I had once walked upon four legs or he 
upon two — there was something in this mysterioua 
affection which tended to modify my sense of justice. 
I was not quite dead to being inexplicably loved. But 
he had bitten a friend's son ; and, with children about, 
dog-days coming, drought prophesied, and possible hydro- 
phobia — no ! the weakness in the judge was overruled. 
Sore-footed butter-making was the culprit's doom. 

But my farm-tenant here put in a plea. We should 
have no peace with trespassing hogs, if that big dog 
were once out of sight ; and he could be taken to 
the farm-cottage, below the hill, and regularly broken in, 
as a pork-patrol ; and Bell warranted, with a little disci- 
pline, he himself would soon be the dog's sole master, 
and that strangers and the children should hear no more 
of his caprices. Agreed to. And, with a rope around 
his neck, the astonished Quixote was led off, to lay aside 
his gentleman instincts, and be numbered among the 
exclusively usefuls. 

Dogs have stomachs with opinions in them, however, 
and the Don rebelled at the immediate difference to which 
he was called upon to accommodate himself in his drink 



RURAL REPUBLIC. 44 1 

and diet, Witli liis rope gnawed off and dragging 
after him, he returned and returned, looking thin and 
unhappy, and resumed his picturesque postures upon 
the lawn, his large eyes eloquent with expectancy 
of his accustomed bread and milk (for strangely 
enough, he has an unconquered aversion to meat), 
and his sides hollow with dismay at the possibility 
of more bones and water. The cook melted to pity. 
Nurses and chambermaids declared the dog a victim. 
The children shared their suppers with him. And so we 
stand — Idlewild divided, but a majority of our little 
ohgarchy strenuous in favor of a repeal of the pig 
compromise, and a complete restoration of the handsome 
dog to his former privileges and perambulations. Ques- 
tions of state policy have been kept pending before now, 
with less conflicts of principles and partialities. 

In fact while a family in town may be governed and 
held together mainly by money, there is a republic within 
the ring fence of a country residence, which is not kept 
comfortable and respectable without high principles and 
careful statesmanship in its daily administration. In 
America, at least, the rights of every living creature, 
from men and women servants, to horse, cow and dog, 
had letter be well understood and watchfully respected. 
The master is the first and worst sufferer, otherwise. 
And this is a call uDOn the character for its better quali- 



448 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

ties — injustice, discrimination, self-restraint, dignity, and 
willing recognition of others' wants and deservings — 
wliicli makes country life a school for the mind and 
heart. There is said to be danger of self- consequence in 
the dictatory haljit of having a little world like a rural 
household to control. Men arc sometimes thought to 
need the elbowing and insignificant-izing of cities. But 
it seems to me that the immediateness of responsibility to 
the opinion of a country neighborhood, is even a better 
check to conceit than the rebuke of mere overlooking by 
a crowd too busy to notice us ; and, while every depen- 
dant and every animal must thus be, at least, kindly and 
rightly treated, the calls for good qualities in ourselves 
are much too grave and wholesome to have any inflating 
influence. 

The complaints as to servants, in American country- 
houses, are loud and many ; and it is probably rare, if 
not altogether impracticable, to have the order and com- 
fort of an English manor-house, in our republican atmo- 
sphere. The attempts and failures are driving many back 
to a division of the seasons between watering-places and 
town life. But, with a willingness to forego a point or 
two of the show, and unlearn some little, both of the 
dependence and the unapproachabieness of the English 
system, an American country household may have all its 
comforts and (philosophically speaking) be at a wor- 



UPPER-SERVANTS NOT TOLERATED. 449 

thicr and more natural level of e very-day life and reci- 
procities. A lesson or two which I have picked out of 
my experience at Idlewild may be instructive, on this 
point, perhaps. 

Servants are natural republicans — whatever their 
nation or color — and a country-house is easiest managed, 
I have more and more come to believe, where each indi- 
vidual's capacities are carefully recognized and respected, 
and where the general opinion of the household is allow- 
ed to have the natural influence of majorities. With 
higher wages, of course, servants can be made to stay, 
anywhere ; but, as justice to neighbors requires a confor- 
mity to the common standard in this respect, the differ- 
ence between " places " is mainly that of treatment and 
incidental agreeableness. The great difficulty in an 
American country-house is to make servants stay — the 
perpetual renewal of them, and the uncomfortableness of 
strange facos and unaccommodated habits, being, at pre- 
sent, our national difficulty of country life. 

A great source of trouble is removed, in the first 
place, if the aristocracy of "upper servants" is done 
away with — no American kitchen being willing to 
"stand the airs" of people between them and their 
employers. A housekeeper, a dandy coachman, a head- 
gardener (or haughty-cxAtmhi) , and a butler, form the 
class not tolerated in the country-life of a republic. If 



450 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

the mistress of tlie house shows that she understands the 
cook's work, and the chambermaid's and nurse's, and 
gives her own orders with equal regularity to all, the 
tempers below stairs find obedience wonderfully easier. 
But the coachman is the most common trouble-maker. 
He dresses better, has more display and pleasure in his 
particular services, uses large privileges as to irregularity 
of meals, and usually ranks himself above other servants. 
This aristocrat may be got rid of, by having the vehicles 
so constructed that the master can do his own driving ; 
while the stable work, as well as the garden and farm 
work, may be very harmoniously done, if the master 
takes the trouble to be the one who gives the orders and 
knows most about it. The understanding of horse-manage- 
ment and daily overseeing of stable and garden, furnish 
interest and occupation, which, I think, quite compensate 
to a gentleman for any style he may thereby forego. And 
it is no trifle, besides, to be so able, " upon a push," to har- 
ness, feed, doctor or drive one's own horses, as not to be at 
the mercy of a coachman's caprices or misrepresentations. 
Servants are human beings with different individual 
characters, however ; and there are chances of their not 
remaining contented, even in thus much of a republic, 
unless their self-esteem is reasonably cared for, and unless 
they are made to feel that their health, comfort and 
morals are subjects of responsible oversight on the part 



GOOD-NATURED TIM. 451 

of their employers. It is an attention to these particu- 
lars in the country household, which must compensate to 
servants for the distance from amusements and other 
differences in favor of town service. But without gene- 
ralizing farther, I will give an instance or two of what 
has been the " salt upon the tails " of such of these flit- 
ting birds as have stayed longest at Idlewild. 

Riding along the road one day, when first here, I met 
a rosy -cheeked Irish lad of eighteen or twenty years of 
age, with a stick and bundle on his shoulders, whose open 
blue eye and bright smile, as he asked for " anny sort of 
job," took my fancy at once. I set him to work with a 
shovel. He and his bundle were soon at home. Too 
newly from Ireland to dodge his work, however, he 
was an unconscious reproach to two or three of his 
countrymen whose wills and backs were more Ameri- 
canized, and to whom half his day's digging was " the 
dollar's worth ;" and, for the first month or two he was 
somewhat unpopular, and likely to be plotted or worried 
into a change of place. His excessive good nature over- 
coming this, he became a fixture, and worked on very 
steadily for a year. 

But there was another rock ahead. The eighteen or 
twenty words with which he asked and answered common 
questions, constituted apparently his whole capability of 
language ; and, in some other respects, he seemed to be 



452 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I L D . 

what is called half-witted. Among five or six colored 
servants, in-doors, who could read and write, and three 
or four field hands, whose intelligence had made them 
prefer farming to the mere drudgery of brick-yard labor, 
Tim naturally became a butt. They laughed at him, 
while they liked and made use of him. But this 
was gradually sapping his contentment ; and there were 
signs that his drooping self-esteem was looking for a 
more favorable climate elsewhere, when, l)y chance, 
I discovered a new quality in him. Forgetting to 
stake out a curve of road upon which he was digging, 
I found that he had done even better without me — 
cutting the bend most correctly and artistically with his 
shovel. He had, what laborers are most deficient in, 
an eye for beauty in a line. With this he could lay out 
garden paths and build stone walls, a change of work to 
which I was not slow in promoting him. By warm praise 
and calling of attention to the cleverness of his labors, I 
soon made him think better of himself, and, with that 
change, vanished all disposition to " quit." Treated with 
sufficiently more respect in the kitchen, Tim has stayed on 
very contentedly for another year — though, having lately 
been surprised into matrimony, by an old girl in the 
neighborhood who is considerably his senior, I antic^iato 
a stammering announcement, before long, of a preference 
of some " place for two." 



SECOND BOSS." 453 

A very handsome aiul bright taljle-servaiit, a mulatto 
Jad, for wliom his city mother is very ambitious, would 
not be a fixture in our secluded household, probably, but 
for one or two incidental privileo^es. With the younger 
children, who have their daily lessons from their mother, 
he is an admitted pupil of the nursery, and fast progress- 
ing in the rudimental education which he needed ; while, 
with our country life and its errands, he is picking 
up health and horsemanship — three advantages that, for 
some time to come, may induce old Sylvia, his mother, to 
let him " stay," though she looks forward to seeing him a 
Broadway hair-dresser, at least, before slie dies. 

But the most threatening torpedo, among the sparks of 
our kitchen cabinet, is the maintenance of an un-republi- 
can luxury of ray own — what the men stigmatize as a 
" second boss," and what I deprecatiugly defend as a 
lesser-anxiety-man, indispensable to one of my profession 
and state of health. Several hands have " quit " rather 
than " stand Sam Bell " any longer ; but I must really 
exhaust measures and compromises before I dispense with 
his vice-Jo6-5-idency. It is difficult, I find, to make work- 
ing men, particularly Irishmen, understand my little mud- 
puddle infirmity of never being intellectually clear after I 
am once " riled " in the morning. What writing I am to 
do in a day, must be done before my thicker sediment is 
stirred u]) — the pellucid reflecting of stars and butterflies 



454 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

being, for me, a simple matter of tranquillity after settling 
over night. But there are orders to be given before 
breakfast, according to the wear, tear, and weather of 
each day — hay cut or muck carted, horses shod or cows 
hojDpled, fowls killed or fences mended, feed mixed, 
stray pigs caught, harness cleaned, and wheels greased — 
contingencies by the dozen, which require each morn- 
ing's separate ordering and arranging. The "Missus" 
can't do it. Messages and overnight arrangements are 
nothing but confusion. There must be a " boss " on the 
spot, weather-wise and plenijjotential, and of undisputed 
omniscience as to the befaUings of pasture, pig-stye and 
stable. 

Now, Bell, though he would be the very perfection of 
a premier under a monarchical Government, is, it must 
be owned, a little stringent and imperative in measures 
and language for a vice-boss in a seventy-acre republic. 
I found him on the spot. He was the tenant of the small 
farm-cottage on the river-bank, paying his twenty-five- 
doUars-a-year rent, but otherwise independent — a shad- 
fisherman in the season, a boat-builder in the winter, a 
band on board a river-steamer now and then, a famous 
dambuilder, quite a horse-doctor, a complete farmer, and 
enough of carpenter and blacksmith to make anything 
" do for the present." The neighbors were so sure that I 
should not agree, for three days together, with " a chap 



THE COMPROMISE POLICY. 455 

of that temper," and warned me so against him as a 
permanency, that, in re-letting the cottage to him, I 
reserved the right of ejectment at will ; but, up to the 
present time (now nearly three years), I can make him 
out to be nothing but a downright Truth on two legs, 
with the Yankee variety of accomplishments above 
enumerated. To be sure he wears his hat in the parlor, 
sometimes, and drives the ladies to church with his coat 
olV or his leg hung out over the side of the driver's box (to 
be comfortable) ; and he speaks his mind like a pump, to 
me or anybody else that stirs the handle ; but 1 would 
call upon him cO-morrow, sooner than upon any other 
man in the world, to break his neck for me, or tell me the 
truth about a horse, or see the last of me with the plague, 
or swim the river for a Doctor, or corner a rattle-snake, 
or kill a mad dog. And as such possibilities make one 
value a man, I have a partiality for Bell which makes me 
spare no plains to make him otherwise popular. He will 
make no compromises himself ; but in various trifles, I 
bring the compensatory policy to bear. By putting the 
horses and wagons entirely under his control, the cook or 
chambermaid has to ask Bell if she has shopping to do, 
and wants a ride to Xewburgh. The men know, that, if 
they wish anything extra, a day's holiday or any 
indulgence or change of labor, Bell's kind-hearted reason 
ableness is easier worked upon than mine. He is th* 



456 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

dispenser of all favors, and, so, forgiven for many a sharp 
look and blunt word. The fact is, that the kitchen 
mnjority arc always in favor of his harsh honesty and his 
certainty of being riglit, though the individual sufferer 
may rebel and " quit." And as Bell's wages are no 
higher than the other men's, and he certainly out-works 
any one of them, at any sort of job, his boss-ocracy 
cannot rightfully be offensive to their republicanism. 

With our cities getting overcrowded, and country 
residences becoming more and more desired as railways 
make them more anr' more accessible, it is well to show, 
with some particularity, what difficulties are in the way. 
A system of household republics, is worth perfecting and 
MAKING NATIONAL — at Icast uutil wc aristocratlzc suffi- 
ciently (which I think we shall never do) to have an 
unthinking and unthought-of class for our domestics, and 
household service a mere matter of obedient machinery. 
The display that we must necessarily forego, and the 
more personal and immediate share that employers must 
necessarily take in the duties and sympathies of their 
dependents, to carry out these little rural republics, will 
not be differences from European life "which we need very 
greatly regret. 



(Dossip for }i]M\h oiiht. 



20 



I N V A D I D S ASK FOR INFORMATION. 459 



LETTER LXIY. 

Invalid Wishes for Letters on their Clasa of Subjects— Boston Physician and hlg 
Alkaline Treatment— Experiment and its Failure — Consumption and its Alle- 
viations, &c., Ac. 

August 5, 1854. 

It would be natural to think that nothhig new could be 
said to invalids. And, probably, nothing can. The 
invalid appetite for more, however — based, doubtless, 
upon the desponding heart's communicative craving for 
sympathy, rather than from expectation of learning any 
untold secret of cure — seems to continue lively. I had 
written, I thought, as much as the modesty of print 
would bear, of my personal experiences in struggling 
with pulmonary disease— dating, with a certain degree 
of justification, from a home in the Highland Chelten- 
ham, to which sufferers under this our country's prevail- 
ing ailment are medically sent. But letters, asking 
opinion as to medicines, systems of cure, climate, SiC, 
thicken daily upon me, and, as a large proportion of 
these are from clergymen (the class oftenest stricken 
by consumption), I still have, perhaps, in my experience 
and multiplicity of kind counsel from others, a casting 



460 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

weight to throw. On one point, certainly — my own rash 
experiment of a new system, with disastrous effects on 
my progress and condition of health — I can speak 
instructively. 

With the letter from a Boston physician, published 
not long since in the Ilomt Journal, I presume the 
invalid reader to be familiar. Coming from one who 
was a stranger to me, it was written in a spirit of Chris- 
tian kindness that inspired immediate confidence ; while 
the ability, good sense, directness, and novelty withal, of 
the medical advice, was like the sound of a trumpet 
to the army of despairing consumptives. Letters 
requesting to know the name and address of the writer 
have poured upon me from a continuous multitude of 
those wishing personal consultation, while the newspapers 
of the country have so generally copied the theory and its 
brief directions, that the knowledge of it, at least, must 
be almost universal. I have heard of very numerous 
cases of experiment without farther counsel than the 
perusal of it. 

To my grateful expression of thanks for this kind phy- 
sician's interest, I received a second truly admirable let- 
ter, accompanied with the requisite internal medicines 
and directions more minute. As my homoeopathic aids 
to convalescence had, for some little time, seemed to 
have weakened or changed in their action upon my-sys- 



CAUTION TO INVALIDS. 461 

tern, and my friends warned me that I was losino- 
ground, I was the more wilHug to try the new remedy — 
misgiving, however, that, in a certain passage of the doc- 
tor's letter, where he mistrusts the wisdom of "pre- 
scribing for a patient at Idlewild and his fingers at Bos- 
ton," there was a difficulty I should first remove by 
going to him. And that misgiving was my good angel, 
to whose " still, small voice '' I gave too little heed. So 
skilful a physician would have said probably, at once, on 
seeing me, that his prescription was based upon very dif- 
ferent phases of disease ; and it is to inspire a mitck need- 
ed caution on this point, tJuit I have now resumed the subject. 
Invalids are so apt to clutch, as I thus did, at a remedy, 
without first making certain that it is their form of dis- 
ease to which it is suited. 

With my unconquerable night-coughs and hemorrhages 
for the groundwork of his theory, the doctor, it will 
be remembered, says : — 

" In all cases like yours the skin does not perform its office. * * 
The system is surcharged, overflowing with acidity y * * 
'• Admit these facts, and what is the conclusion of the whole mat- 
ter ? It is this : — Take a warm alkaline bath, say twice a week." 
'•' Next, but not second in importance, night and day sur- 
round the chest with a soap-jacket, made of flannel and spread 
with the darkest brown soap (being strongest with the alkali), 
melted to tho consistence of a thick paste with a little boiling 



462 LETTERS FROM IDLEWIL D. 

water. * * <• Use a simple, pure alkali, internally, to neu- 
tralize the acidity already there." 



It was the latter part of May, and tlie very warm 
weather was already commenciug when I entered upon 
the alkaline treatmeyit. The " soap-jacket," of course, 
could not be worn witliout a second flannel shirt over 
it, to keep in its paste and moisture, and here was 
my first trouble. So excessive was the perspiration, 
night and day, with the impermeable closeness 
of the covering, that I was sensibly weakened and 
distressed for breath, while exercise was nearly impossi-* 
and every puff of air seemed to give me a cold. My 
voice weakened, by the third day, so that I could scarcely 
articulate, my head seemed crammed with an hourly 
increasing catarrh, I felt the return of some old rheumatic 
symptoms, the muscles of my face and eyes showed rapid 
exhaustion, and my family, much alarmed, insisted on a 
stoppage of the treatment. I thought it best to make a 
fair trial of it, however, and strictly followed the direc- 
tions till the eighth day — when the '' internal alkali " 
had so completely deadened the coats of my stomach and 
destroyed the tone, that I feared I should be unable 
to take the nourishment necessary for life. I had the 
sensation of being tanned inwardly to sole-leather, scarce 
able to taste the differences in food and drinks, and pal- 



THE ''alkali cure." 463 

pably burthcning uature with every morsel I swallowed. 
And, as in all my previous illness I had never before 
failed to have appetite proportionate to exercise, and 
had known no feeling of discomfort inwardly except from 
the convulsion of the cough, I was sure that the internal 
effect, at least, was injurious. My hemorrhages, mean- 
time, grew more profuse, and, as I persisted in my rides, 
the least motion of the horse beyond a walk brought the 
blood to my mouth abundantly. 

With the giving up of the alkalis on the eighth day, 
I found myself more ill than I had ever previously been. 
There was no sign that the antagonist acids had been en- 
countered, or that anything but poor weakened Nature 
herself had received the deadly ammunition of the alkalis. 
TTith the resuming of my former un-medicinal system, 
however, I began to rally again. The vigorous use of 
flesh-brush and crash-towels before and after cold baths 
in the morning, a more generous diet, and a free horse, 
brought me gradually up ; and, now (after seven weeks), 
I am once more where the alkalis began with me. An- 
other patient who made the same experiment (a distin- 
guished officer of the army who had brought consumption 
home from his campaigns in Mexico), but whose first re- 
sult from the alkalis, unlike mine, was a relief, has since 
died under the treatment. With the publicity which I 
have unexpectedly given to the ''alkali cu?-e,'' and a con- 



464 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

fidence thus indirectly expressed in it, it is but just, 
perhaps, that I should declare ray own belief that it is 
likely to be wholly misapplied, and, in any case, dangerous 
without the best of medical counsel and supervision. 

Of the unusual professional frankness of the writer of 
the letter, and of his high moral and intellectual tone of 
study, sympathy and duty, no one could doubt, who has 
read it. The proof is the universal confidence it inspired, 
and the numbers who have since sought him out with 
great eagerness for advice. With personal knowledge 
of a patient, the danger of his theory, I doubt not, would 
be obviated by his conscientious making first certain of 
its fitness to the case. It is not wonderful that all man- 
ner of sick people do not get the full attention of the over- 
worked best doctors, and that this same making first cer- 
tain is somewhat rare. It is for this reason that a phy- 
sician as an intimate friend is invaluable — one who will 
make an untiring enthusiasm of yonr cure — while one 
who gives you ten minutes and one or two looks and 
touches, and a little uninterested listening, at a profes- 
sional hour, is a risk, to say the least. Fortunately, nine 
out of ten of the medicines for every disease are pre- 
scribed by Nature — fresh air, exercise, control of habits 
and appetite, etc., etc.— but it is not too much to add, 
that nine points out of ten of medical advice also, are 
given by Nature. The utter faith with which the sick 



THE WAY TO GET '' * A D V I C E . " 465 

receive aud follow the hasty opiuion of a doctor, and the 
utter inattention to the complainings and promptings of 
their own pain-taught and truth-telling nerves, organs 
and senses, is a giving up of the whole business to a tenth 
committee-man, who, by rights, should only be one in a 
consultation. " It has surprised me more than anything 
else," says a very sensible man, writing his experience in 
consumption, " to find how many different opinions I have 
received, in regard to the seat of my disease, from physi- 
cians of high standing." In fact the five-minute omni- 
science that is expected of doctors is expecting too much. 
It would be much wiser to go first to a careful lawyer, 
who will sit down and cross-examine you, put your symp- 
toms into condensed and comprehensible language, recon- 
cile your contradictions, sift off your reluctancies and su- 
perfluities, and take the side-evidence of your friends and 
attendants ; and from this prepare a digest of what you 
yourself know of your case, which the physician can read 
while he looks at you and feels your pulse for the pro- 
fessional corroborations. In no shorter way, I am in- 
clined to think, will any common patient get the best ad- 
vice from a "physician with extensive practice." 

And now shall I stop ? — or may we, dear invalid rea- 
der, safely gossip away another half-hour upon our theme 
of sympathies ? 

I think there is a grain of truth for us in almost every 

20* 



466 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

theory of cure — something in hydropathy, something in 
" kneading and pommelling the stomach," something in 
"inhalations," something in raising the siege of the 
disease by counter-irritation, or by dislodgment and 
change of action with homoeopathic alternations, etc., etc., 
etc. By judicious care and counsel we may combine a 
self-treatment from two or more of these " positive cures 
for consumption," — particularly, from such as involve no 
use of violent medicines, or are mainly alleviative — thus 
keeping prudence awake and encouraging hope, even if 
we do not stumble by chance on the specific for our par- 
ticular case. In homoeopathy, however — as administered 
by a prophet in its secrets like Doctor Gray of New 
York — I may express my individual " settling down " of 
faith and preference. 

But consumption, mourned over as it is, seems to me 
a gentle untying of the knot of life, instead of the sud- 
den and harsh tearing asunder of its threads by other 
disease — a tenderness in the destroying angel, as it were, 
which greatly softens, for some, his inevitable errand to 
all. It is a decay with little or no pain, insensible almost 
in its progress, delayed, sometimes, year after year, in its 
more fatal approaches. And it is not alone in its indul- 
gent prolonging and deferring that consumption is like a 
blessing. The cords which it first loosens are the coarser 
ones most confining to the mind. The weight of the ma- 



ILLNESS INDUCES NEW ESTIMATES. 461 

terial senses is gradually taken from the soul with the 
lightening of their food and the lessening of their strength. 
Probably, till he owns himself an invalid, no man has 
ever given the wings of his spirit room enough — few, if 
any, have thought to adjust the ministerings to body and 
soul so as to subdue the senses to their secondary place 
and play. With illness enough for this, and not enough 
to distress or weaken — with consumption, in other words, 
as most commonly experienced — the mind becomes con- 
scious of a wonderfully new freedom and predominance. 
Things around alter their value. Estimates of persons 
and pursuits strangely change. Nature seems as newly 
beautiful as if a film had fallen from the eyes. The purer 
affections, the simpler motives, the humbler and more 
secluded reliances for sympathy, arc found to have been 
the closest-linked with thoughts bolder and freer. Who 
has not wondered at the cheerfulness of consumptive per- 
sons ? It is because, with the senses kept under by in- 
valid treatment, there is no ''depression of spirit." 
With careful regimen, and the system purified and disci- 
plined, life, what there is of it, is in the most exhilarating 
balance of its varied proportions. Death is not dreaded 
where there is, thus, such a conscious breaking through 
of the wings of another life, freer and higher. 



468 LETTERS FROM I D L E AV I L D 



LETTER LXY. 

Affection for our Doctors — Excellent Letter from my Friend of the Alkali — Taboo 
upon Tea — Letter from an Allopathic Physician — Doctor's Visits, &c., &c. 

Aiiipist 26, 1664. 

We love our doctors. It is a question whether they 
do not get more than their share of human affection — 
more, at least, than they can very well know what to do 
with (for doctors, like other " great guns," have their 
bore, showing what they can "carry"). Just now, 
indeed, I am beginning to think one of them a whole 
castle, with a battery of patients* to defend him — the 
last few mails fairly bombarding me with letters in vindi- 
cation of the Boston physician, of whose " alkaline treat- 
ment " I had ventured to announce my own unsuccessful 
experiment. "With his personal advice and supervision, it 
seems (by their loud report) to be a very different thing. 
They speak most enthusiastically and gratefully of it and 

* A distinguished literary man is among these, and also the brother-in-law of 
one of our ablest Professors. They both recommend a publication of their 
statements of having greatly benefited by the personal advice and prescription 
of this physician, for whose name they had applied on reading his letter in the 
Bb7n6 Journal. 



VALUABLE SUGGESTIONS. 469 

him. That he is a very aljle aud purely philanthropic 
man, we are very sure that no can one doubt who has read 
his letters ; and his practice, professionally, seems to be 
as effective and fascinating as his pen. There is, by the 
way, in the second letter which he so kindly addi'cssed to 
me, upon my own complaints, a passage full of valuable 
suggestion for invalids, and, with the Doctor's permission, 
we will share it among us. He says : — 

" The alkali which I commonly use is soda ; a satui-atcd solution, 
impregnated with, rather than containing, some preparation of 
iron, generally the carbonate. Why the Creator placed both iron 
and soda as constituent elements in all healthy blood, I need 
not inquire. It is sufficient to the medical man that such is the 
fact. And, in cases like yours, where as you admit, there is an 
ex'cess of aiwdity in the system, I need not demonstrate that the 
blood must necessarily be deprived of these to a greater or less 
extent. An acid will neutralize and destroy an alkali. If 
deprived of them, the blood must become thickened. If thickened, 
will it, can it, circulate as freely in the extremities and smaller 
vessels ? If not in these, must there not be increased congestion 
of the large vessels which are on the chest and bram — in the more 
vascular parts of the system? If undue pressure there, would 
there not be increased tendency to hemorrhage, whether once a 
month or once in two months ? 

*• But it is in vain that you attempt to correct this, unless acids, 
and all articles which become acid in the stomach, are strictly, 
rigidly avoided. Every individual has his dietic idiosyncracies, 
so to say : and the old proverb is that ' a man at thirty, as to his 



470 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

diet, is eitlier a pliysiciau or a fool.' What may become acidulous 
with one, may not with another. But a patient should notice his 
own peculiarities, and make his diet conform to the rule given. 
Generally, I advise to avoid all acids, vinegar in all its diguises — 
pies, cakes, preserves ; puddings, except sago, tapioca, arrow-root, 
etc., and these to be used without sweet sauces — all fruits, whether 
foreign or domestic. If once or twice in the season the rule is 
relaxed to freshen the memory with these articles, it is in favor of 
a few ripe whortleberries, or a ripe sweet peach at breakfast. And 
last but not least, I forbid tea and coffee. 

*'0f the necessity of this last, it is often very difficult to con- 
vince patients. It is no argument to say, * all the world uses 
them.' I answer, ' to the pure all things are pure,' and to the 
healthy all things are innocent in a measure. It is the system in 
a particular state to which I refer. But patients say, ' tea or 
coflfee makes me feel much brighter!' I know they come 
with a soothing promise. I know Abdcl Kader said (Jf coffee : — 
*It is the drink of the people of God !' And I often think 
of the description of tea, said to have been given by an 
ambassador of the * flowery kingdom,' on introducing it at the 
court of Thibet: — 'It is,' said he, *a beverage which quenches 
thirst, and mitigates sorrow!' And, to the student, especially 
with a sensitive organization, and one whose susceptibility to 
stimulus has not been vitiated by a resort to more potent stimuli, 
its first effect is so spirituelle, so refreshing, so delightful! 
But, to a disordered and enfeebled digestive system, they impart 
no more permanent strength, than the whip and spur give strength 
to the jaded, worn-out racer. I should strenuously advise you to 
exorcise the tea. I am aware that Liebig has advanced the idea 
that tea may possibly increase the secretion of bile, and, in this 



TABOO UPON T i: A . 471 

view, you might think it perhaps beneficial in your occasional 
bilious derelictions. But we all know that it contains tannic 
acid, and my experience is, that it is injurious \Yhere the vigor of 
the digestive system is at all impaired, and where it is used warm. 
As a substitute, you have iced milk, if your stomach will tolerate 
it ; or, better still, the antediluvian beverage, cold water. Aside 
from everything else, I should urge cold fluids in all cases where 
there is a tendency to hemorrhage. And the water, depend upon 
it, will give a more substantial, reliable vigor for the day's work, 
than tea or coffee. If, remembering whom I have the pleasure of 
addressing, a line of poetry in a medical letter, would not be out 
of place, I would add, that there is as much scientific truth as 
poetic beauty in the words which say of ' a cup of water,' that 

' Its draught 
Of cool refreshment, drained by fevered lips, 
Will give a shock of pleasure to the frame, 
More exquisite than when nectarean juice 
Renews the life of joy in happiest hours.' 

"The horseback exercise, though I do not believe with Syden- 
ham, that, * with bark, it is a cure for consumption,' yet it is 
excellent for exercise — nothing better." 

The taboo upon tea, in this passage of dietetics, touches 
invalids upon a tender point. Without tea the despond- 
ing sick man is a monotone indeed — his life one note (and 
that b flat) from morn till night, and from night till morn 
again. If the spirits need to be medicined as well as the 
body (as sometimes they do), may there not be a natural 
want of some such preventive against Tnere platitude'? 



4t2 LETTERS FROM IDLEWlLD. 

The Indian, in his journey through the wilderness, climbs 
once a day into a tall tree, to get the range of his weary 
steps, and keep acquainted with the sky and the horizon — 
overlooking, for that brief moment, at least, that which 
overshadows his path and confines his view. To be able 
to see far and generalize, once a day, is, experience tells 
a man, a necessity in this be-littliug world, even with the 
best of health. In sickness, it is often a necessity — al- 
ways a compensating luxury and consolation. The grate- 
ful stimulus of the tea-cup need not be taken in excess. 
With the system made delicate and sensitive, a very weak 
tea serves for the elation of the spirits — what is com- 
monly called the " English breakfast tea," the most in- 
nocent as well as full-flavored of these precious leaves of 
the Orient, being (for me at least) stimulus enough. 
"Without assenting to Dr. Johnson's punning demand, in 
his parody of Horace : — 

^" Tea, sole oriente, tea, decente, requiro, 

the morning cup might be safely insisted on by the inva- 
lid — though the "^e" of the Latin poet was probably 
more agreeable at evening. 

From his inexorability on this point, and the trenchant 
unsparingness of his favorite theory of soap-cure, I fancy 
that my Boston correspondent is a young man. Another 
physician, equally a stranger to me, but animated by the 



A N O T H K R LE T T E 11 OX DIETETICS. 4*13 

same genial sympathy and kiudness, writes to me with 
the prefatory remark that he has beea twenty-five years 
a practitioner of medicine, and his opinion as to diete- 
tics, seems to have grown more indulgent with experience. 
I must quote a passage from his letter (though, like the 
other, intended for a private one), the professional libe- 
rality and well-acquired convictions with which he writes, 
making it of value to all invalids : — 



* * << 



You should banish from your miud, if you ever enter- 
tained it, all notion of specifics for your malady. Such do not 
exist for consumption, nor for any disease. The most that drugs 
can do is to palliate till Nature can relieve. The cure is to be 
sought in other influences ; such especially as promote the func- 
tions of digestion, assimilation, and absorption. The course which 
you first adopted, of horseback exercise, cold bathing, friction, 
and free exposure to the air, was well adapted to these ends — es- 
pecially if connected with a nutritious diet, chiefly of animal food, 
and aided by good malt liquor, such as London porter, or Calton 
ale. The cod-liver oil I should have wished you to continue, at 
the same time, and I should have prescribed, also, ten or fifteen 
grains of tartarized iron, to be taken three times a day. If this 
course, persevered in, would not avert your disease, I doubt 
whether anything would. If the appetite and digestion continue 
good, however, there is always strong encouragement that the dis- 
ease may be overcome. Sustain the appetite and digestion by 
out-door exercise, friction, cold baths, etc., and hope confidently 
for restoration. An issue in the arm, or below the clavicle, would 
be very likely, in such a case as yours, to afford considerable relief 



414 LETTERS FKOM IDLEWILD. 

by its revulsive influence. If malt liquors do not agree with 
you, use a little pure brandy, or sherry or Madeu-a wine." 

It is easy to see why we love doctors, when they dis- 
course to us so cheeringly and earnestly on what concerns 
ourselves only. In fact, sickness has its pleasant compen- 
sations. It is one end of a completing circle of exporience 
that very nearly touches the other. Many a day of health 
is less happy than many a day of sickness. A faithful 
joy-ometer, could we keep one, might surprise us with 
its comparative average of the rise and fall of content- 
ment's varying quicksilver, when well or when ill. Could 
any possible morning call equal the interest of the doc- 
tor's visit ? And convalescence ! The happiness of that 
is among the experiences of life which it is wonderful 
should be unsung. To how many, has the month of con- 
valescence been the month oftenest remembered and 
wished for again — health and honeymooivj forgotten while 
this is thought of 1 



DIETETIC INDISCRETIONS. 475 



LETTER LXYI. 

Chat upon Invalid Indiscretions — Dietetics of the Soul— Forenoon on Horse- 
back — Use of an Errand in a Ride — Steel Pens, and the consequent Decline 
of Penknives — Fatigue after Pleasure, Ac, &c. 

September 9, 1S54. 

Shall we chat of our indiscretions of appetite, this 
morning — I giving you (with invalid freedom to digress, 
if temptation oflfer) the history of a dietetic irregularity 
of mine ? Nature " breaks diet " occasionally, with a 
freshet, and it evidently does Nature good — clearing 
away the insensible accretions, and reaching the dull 
deposits in otherwise inaccessible corners. Even with 
the flow of the daily life-stream hopelessly diminished, it 
is still pleasant to know where icas the channel, and 
where once reached the bubbles — is it not ? 

My " spree," I should premise, was not a violation of 
the dietetics of the stomach. To these I have found 
no great trouble to be constant. In fact, with salads 
and lobsters, champagne, pastry and pickles, gravies, 
garnishings and " good things " generally, I closed my 
mortal accounts without a sigh — possibly with an eye to 



476 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

business, in my resigna^tion, however, as I found that the 
'' single dish " of the doctor's prescription made its way 
much quicker, without company, to that finger's end that 
picks adjectives and pronouns. Industry of pen increases 
by what might lessen industry of the plough. 

A German physician, Ernest Yon Feuchtersleben, has 
written upon the " Dietetics of the Soul." The book 
has passed through seven editions, in the original, and is 
now just translated and published by Francis and Co., in 
Boston. It shows us how we " break diet " (too often) 
with our sins of passion and imagination, and how we 
may care for our bodily health, and obtain convalescence 
and cure, by strict regimen of the temper and the intel- 
lect. I mention this to justify what might seem like 
a fancifulness on my part — the speaking of oiner dietetics 
than those of meat and drink. Yon Feuchtersleben 
(to plunder an idea for the gentler gender as we go) 
even thinks leauty is aitainahh or recoverable by this 
fancy-pathy. He quotes from a celebrated German 
lady, who says : — " Persons like ourselves can only 
become healthy by feeling the greatest disgust at illness, 
and placing implicit reliance on the axiom that health is 
most lovely and loveable." 

But, not to have my will of a whole day of summer, is 
the dietetic that has troubled me most. You know how 
it is, dear pulmonary brother ! The appetite for out of 



AN IRRESISTIBLE FORENOON. 47t 

doors, with free abandonment to the chances of idleness, 
keener and more appreciative as its relish has become — 
is still lessened in the time it can sustain itself. It must 
be a short walk, though with exquisite enjoyment of sun- 
shine and air — a brief ride, though with exhilarating 
sense of pulses quickened by motion. The eyes tire and 
the soul shuts, in the very middle of a study of a land- 
scape at which the first glance was enchantment. A 
whole morning is a meal for a man in the glory of health. 
A sunset with a long summer twilight — that is a feast 
which must have been prepared for by abstinence ; by 
late rising and a forenoon of in-doors. And the over- 
tasking of the powers of attention, I find — fatigue of 
the sense of beauty, or a surfeit of agreeable people — 
acts immediately on the bodily health. It starts a 
hemorrhage. It aggravates a cough. 

There came a forenoon, however — (those who know 
the differences in forenoons understand how there might 
be such a one) — altogether irresistible. It seemed 
like an improvement in the article. No first fig, in the 
opening of a new box, ever seemed, to a child, sweeter 
than all that are gone before, than the smell of that nine 
A.M. to my sensitive nostrils. It was during the cool 
week we had, in the closing of July — if you remember — 
or, rather, it was the coming round of the South wind 
again, after coolness a little unseasonable, and with fra- 



4t8 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

grance and softness that had been, meantime, ripening 
like wine. Of such a feast, to take a taste of half an 
hour, and then turn away to an easy chair and books ? 
To save appetite for an evening, with such a morning 
spread out to tempt one ? Saddle my mare, on the con- 
trary ! 

Forenoon exercise on horseback — temptingly delicious 
as it is in a breezy summer's day — is a forbidden fruit to in- 
valids, for two or three incidental reasons. First, as I have 
already explained, it exhausts the stock of elasticity for the 
twelve waking hours of which it is the beginning. Second, 
it irritates (often into profuse bleeding from the mouth, 
in my case) the comparatively empty stomach, which 
needs the cushioning of food for its half-healed membranes. 
And, third, it renders later exercise impossible — thus de- 
priving the night's sleep of the immediate lull which fol- 
lows fresh fatigue, and substituting for it the wakefulness 
of exhaustion, prolonged through a long day into ner- 
vousness. "The doctor's orders" are not accompanied 
with this satisfactory explanation, usually ; but it is for 
these or similar reasons that the docile patient takes his 
ride only with the lengthening shadows of the afternoon. 

But life — the wine of the life of this world — is in the 
morning air. Breath for the pores, exhilaration for the 
blood, newness and freshness for the worn senses and 
fibres, are the over-runnings from the cups of the ascending 



PLEASURE OF AN ERRAND. 419 

dewdrops. The descending dew of evening may be purer, 
but it is not fragrant yet with the breath of the flowers 
it is on its way to. The earth-tried and recalled — the 
dews laden with perfume and exhaling reluctantly through 
the forenoon's warmer hours — arc the tempters for senses 
still mortal. For flesh-and-blood consciousness of exist- 
ence, the intoxication is in the just full glory of the day. 

The drought had stilled Idlewild brook, and the part- 
ing steps of my mare's dainty feet, as slie picked her 
way down the windings of the precipitous road, were not 
set to music as usual. But the leaves rustled and the 
birds sang. And when we left the closed gate behind us, 
and galloped off upon the level bank of the Moodna, it 
was with a sense of health that had a one-horse power — 
the animal at the end of my spine, and subject to my 
volition, being as much a part of me as the smile I could 
bridle on my lip — as the tear subject to the lashes of my 
eye. God has thus, in the horse, given us limbs we can 
put on and leave off — lungs we can borrow for more speed 
— strength we can incorporate with our weakness. Not 
to have a horse in familiar and daily use — to the degree 
which embodies the generous animal and his powers into 
your consciousness of forces and faculties — is to be less of 
a being by that much. 

There is a point, in the pleasantest ride, when one feels 
that an errand would have made it pleasanter. The 



480 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

invalid, particularly is apt to draw rein (without an ob- 
ject in his ride), and start too soon on his return. By a 
caprice of irregular spirits, exercise is thus shirked, some- 
times, when there is no beginning of weariness of the 
body. So flourishing a town as Newburgh, four miles 
off, and to which there are four different and pleasant 
roads from Idlewild, is quite a treasure to me in this re- 
spect. It is hard not to have an errand there ; for, fail- 
ing everything else, there is almost the certainty of a 
letter at the Post-oflQce — many of my correspondents 
being quite oblivious of my address of Moodiia, Orange 
Co., and directing (with wonderful faith in propinquity 
and postmasters) to the largest place they can think of 
in the neighborhood. 

But, upon this " spree " of a forenoon-full of out-o f- 
doors, I gave myself a special errand to Newburgh (to 
make sure of getting there, though I should go round by 
Mortonville, the wildest and longest way), and as the 
errand in question reminds me of an an appeal I have long 
thought of making to manufacturers, for the benefit of 
a certain class of suffering authors, a digression to it will 
perhaps be excused by invalids — a redeeming feature of 
utility being very necessary, occasionally, to make the 
strong and hearty feel kindly towards our sick-room gossip. 

The '^ improvement of the age," in which, I presume, 
no one can take a share who has any feeling for grace in 



PENS AND PENKNIVES. 481 

a line or freedom in thumb aud finger, is iht steel pen. 
An invention of wooden shoes, of the same size for all 
human beings, would be for me a very similar economy 
and convenience. The use of the article has become very 
general, however — a circumstance which, in all proba- 
bility, has accidentally taken a census of the mechanical- 
fingered and angular-brained of our highly frec-and-equal 
population. There is a remaining class to whom the steel 
pen is an inconvenience of tlie most positive kind — poets 
and writers on imaginative or delicate subjects, whose 
grace and ease of style are at once paralysed by a nib so 
unsusceptible and stiff, and, indeed, at whose invitation of 
ink, with such misrepresenting angularity of scratch, no 
playful or tender sentiment will pass from brain to finger. 
I presume it has always been true, that, if it were not 
for geese and the more pliable medium they give us, 
poetry and fancy would be cut off from communication 
with the world. 

But goose-quills (and here comes the tight place) 
require penknives of the best quality ; and even as first- 
class statesmen and patriots have died out with the uni- 
versality of middling politicians, so, first-rate penknives 
have disappeared with the universality of tolerable pens 
ready-made. The brick-ifjing movement of the age — mak- 
ing all men and things of a size — leaves no eminences of 
day (such as Henry Clay) standing around us ; and with 

21 



482 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

steel pens, and no " Rofrers's best penknives/^ poets will soon 
he " as like as brick.^," if heard of at all. 

In g-alloping up the ascents of the tangled valley of 
Ring's Mills, where the Moodna ties a love-knot of scene- 
ry among the abrupt hills and rocks so magnificently 
wooded — feeling (horse and all) as strong and swift as 
was any man's share — I had the new penknife in my 
mind, which was the morning's errand to Newburgh. 
The old one — a cherished double-])lade which had long 
bridged over, for me, the uncertain chasm between brain 
and white paper — had been called upon (like the Hon. 
Mrs. Norton) for duties a little beyond the strength of 
its fine edge. A slate-pencil had been sharpened with it. 
For a week or two I had tried honeing and stropping, 
and struggled to believe in the renewableuess of temper 
so unyielding hitherto. But the nibs that were to be 
re-pointed were only crushed. The readers of the Hotm 
Journal will remember the articles in which the convey- 
ance of my meaning was painfully clumsy and imperfect. 
Nobody could write with such a penknife. 

Brown's, in Newburgh, is a hardware store worthy of 
Broadway — a museum of usefulnesses and positivities, 
which, I have found it a refreshing change from modern 
poetry to make a lounge of — and I was soon, by permis- 
sion, behind his counter, lost in an inviting wilderness of 
little brown bundles, each with its tempting specimen 



"rogers's best." 483 

outside under the twine. Oh, the pleasure of opening one 
of each, trying its edge upon the round of the hand, and 
imagining the adjectives and pronouns, the similitudes and 
sentiments, for the passage of which it could make a 
quill once more inviting to the capricious brain 1 

But I was disappointed. Calling for a quill, to make 
a final experiment before choosing (not compelled, fortu- 
nately, to take it for Ijcttcr or worse without trial), 
I found the edges of those polished and showy look- 
ing things untrue, Tlie tempers had not been prepared 
for such work. Pen-making being no longer among the 
duties in a knife's destiny, owing to the common use 
of steel-pens, the blade is now only fitted to cut threads 
and to clean finger-nails. 

I called on my friend Mr. Brown, and explained my 
difficulty. 

" Oh, my dear sir," said he, looking unencouragingly 
at the tall shelves with his assorted wilderness of cutlery, 
" penknives are not what they used to be. You'll not find 
one, I am afraid, in those new parcels. But " (he conti- 
nued, putting his hand in his waistcoat pocket and pulling 
out a plain old article, such as we used to see in the days 
of Tom Hood and Elia), "here is one that I have car- 
ried for years in my pocket — a Rogers's best — and I will 
make you a present of it." 

It was a flower flung on the ebbing current of my 



484 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

forenoon ! (for, by this time, and, with my strength tied by 
the bridle to the post outside, I was beginning to exhaust 
and be dispirited), and I mentally thanked Mr. Brown 
for a knidness that chanced to be as timely as it was 
frank and flattering. I needed both the knife and the 
tender thought. 

Of all the kinds of sadness which an invalid knows (to 
resume our Idle wild gossip), the most leaden and pro 
strating is that of fatigue after a forbidden pleasure. 
One becomes, in a long illness, a luxuriast in sadness — 
discriminating between its moods, as a mourner between 
plaintiveness in music. The brain — as I have elsewhere 
said — has its lift and scope, strangely independent, some- 
times, of the weaknesses of the body. " I have often 
observed myself with attention," says the author of the 
" Dietetics of the Soul," " and found that even when 
the head is most bewildered, thought remains pure and 
free, like some force which has retired unscathed to its 
stronghold before the enemy." But — (for our dignity as 
immortal spirits, let it make us grateful to remember) — 
there is no escape from the depression of self-rei:)roach. 
]S"ot even the oblivion of a reverie will beguile fatigue 
that was imprudent and needless. 

Of my nervous and weary afternoon, dear brother 
invalid — of the sunset hour and twilight, lost because 
unappreciable after the forenoon surfeit and exhaustion — 



THE MORAL. 485 

I need give you only the moral. Suffering, which makes 
us dwell upon our failure in constancy and resolution, is 
very diflerent from the suffering which elevates us— ele- 
vates us, because, while it brings us nearer to what is nobler 
and purer, it seems to be only detaching us from the 
coarser life which prevented our being part of it. I 
should like to feel that my extravagance in a truant 
forenoon— wliich gave me a night of illness, as well as a 
day-penance of irredeemable depression— may have made 
palatable, in the gossip which confesses it, a lesson of 
prudence for some fellow-sinner of an invahd. 



486 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD 



LETTER LXYII. 

Sufferers from Drought— Our Ilyla or Tree-toad — Cure of Jaundice— Abuses by 
Telegraph-menders, <tc., &c. 

Septemher 16, 18M. 

The lungs of ten thousand trees, invalids every one, 
are suffering from the drought, in the woods of Idlewild 
We are a pulmonary wilderness — they and I. The 
yelloio pine is the single exception — healthier and brighter 
than I have ever before known it, doubtless from the 
more arid and Southern atmosphere which has taken 
possession of our Northern latitude. (So will there be 
no plague without some to thrive better for it !) Our 
willows look " in the last stages," however. Elms are of 
a reconciled yellow, waiting for autumn. Oaks and 
chestnuts have dropped their superfluous leaves from the 
ends of branches too luxuriant (laid aside their dissipa- 
tions, as it were), and hold on for the deferred rains with 
a confidence in re-invigoration yet possible. The evening 
wind walks through our hospital with a fallen-leaf 
cadence in its sigh — the medicine of its dews of small 
avail. 



A NASTY T K E E - T U A D . " 48T 

But we have one apparent sufferer by the excessive 
drouglit, who has been the object of some superstitious 
tenderness at Idlewild — his fastidious preference as to a 
room in which to be sick, and his obstinacy as to puttmg 
us to inconvenience, having engendered the idea that it 
was a human soul in the habit of having his own way, 
though at present, probably, in a very purgatorial stage 
of downward transmigration. This, our in-door guest by 
his own choice and invitation, is known in Natural History 
as a Hyla, and in common mention as "a nasty tree-toad." 
And that opprobrious adjective is so invariably prefixed, 
by all who see and name him, as to seem a penal retribu- 
tion of Providence for sins in another existence ; thouirh 
as we have not joined in thus stigmatizing the outcast, 
but as, on the contrary, our family sympathies have con- 
verted him into an object of respectful interest and 
attention, it looks a little as if purgatory may not be 
altogether without its chances of pity. 

The intelligence manifested by this little reptile may be 
well worth recording. His first appearance was a jump 
that he made from the long neck of a goblet of earthern 
ware, used to keep drinking-water cool through the night, 
and which stood upon a wash-stand in a dressing-room. 
With the upset of his hiding-place, to turn out a tumbler 
of water, he sprang to the wall, clinging to it by the 
mucous tubercle on the toe which forms his peculiarity. 



488 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

The servants were summoned, and he was caught and 
thrown out of the window — finding his way in again, 
however, before morning, and again and again ejected and 
returning — four times — till at last he was taken to the 
window at the rear of the house, and pitched roughly 
upon the gravelled area at the kitchen door. My wife, 
whose visitor he was, presumed this to be the last of him ; 
but, strangely enough, bis protuberant eyes looked at her 
from the neck of the water-jar, as usual, the next morn- 
ing ; he having found his way around the house, passing 
a dozen windows within which water was equally accessi- 
ble, entering between the slats of a closed blind, and 
taking possession once more of that particular vessel — 
certainly a less convenient one (with its narrow neck 
through which he could hardly squeeze himself) than 
the bath-tub and water-pitcher near by. 

Curiosity was, by this time, gi'own thoughtful, however. 
We all remembered having heard, as long as we had lived 
at Idlewild, the gurgle of a tree-toad's song, from the side 
of the house upon which the wmdow of that dressing-room 
opens. His voice, and a night-owl's, apparently from the 
same tree overhanging the precipice, were the music 
familiar to all who walked at late hours under our roof. 
He was an out-door one of us — driven to take shelter 
within, by the unseasonable weather and sickness — it was 
now acknov/ledged, by all, and with regret at the tardi- 



A G E R M A N REMEDY. 489 

ness of the recognition. But, from that time he has 
been tenderly treated. My wife cares for Hyla as others 
care for nightingales and goldfinches. He jumps to the 
window-ledge or to the wall, apparently for air and 
exercise, once a day — the maid, meantime, changing the 
water, into which he returns, to sit hydropathically 
immersed. His bead-like eyes twinkle, and his curtain- 
like throat swells and throbs with his breathings, when 
he is approached, but he does not stir. He believes in 
us — a faith in those who once misunderstood him which 
has its lesson of humility. For six weeks he has now 
been our inmate. 

In these days, when the " places that know us " seem 
struggling to reveal that they know spirits also, we look 
inquiringly upon all that announces a new presence. Of 
this trusting tree-toad's errand and quality my uncer- 
tainty is at least respectful. 

:{: ^ :fc ^ :f: 5(j 

I do not know whether, among our invalid public 
of readers, there are any whose complaint is the jaundice ; 
but the German cure for it — sudden stir of the bile by 
an arousal of the indignation* — is to be found in the 



* My brother, the nervous and delicately organized Editor of the Jlumcal 
World, called in a physician when prostrated with the jaundice in Leipsic, 
Germany. The Doctor left, promising to send in Iiis prcBcription. Meantime 
an old woman entered, who accused my brother of stealing, spat in his face 

21* 



490 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

highways about Idlewild, its efficacy likely to be tried 
upon you, indeed, let your complaint be what it will. I 
speak of a one-horse wagon, with two men and an axe 
and a ladder — telegraph-menders who pass to and fro, 
periodically, and who feel at liberty to cut down, without 
leave or consultation, any beautiful tree upon the road- 
side, the waving of whose branches may interfere with 
the wires. Lined as our Highland roads are with bird- 
planted cedars, and the telegraph track being compelled 
by law to follow the highway, here is a plump conflict 
between utility and beauty. I saw two cedars cut 
down yesterday, and their spires of luxuriant foliage 
thrown into the ditch like weeds or thistles, and twenty 
years would not restore the lovely like of them to the 
border of my daily ride. What news their delicate 
branch-tips may have tamjDcred with, or what friend's 
lightning-sped message, sad or joyous, was likely to be 
modified or hindered by the leaving our highway shaded 
and beautiful, of course was not taken into immediate 
consideration. A jaundice would have time enough to 
be cured, before most human tempers would remember 
friends or news enough to neutralize such an irritant of 
the bile. But (dear Directors and Companieslj is there 
no way to give your wires room enough, without cutting 

and ran out of the room ! This was the medicine — immediately effectual — for 
with the vigorous start of the bile commenced a rapid recovery. 



TREES VS. TELEGRAPHS. 491 

a track for them through the shade-trees under which 
beggar and invahd, traveller and laboring man, bless God 
for common and free shelter from the sun ? A tree in 
a field is one man's. A tree in the road is the people's — 
sacred to the wayfarer and the weary. Would it not be 
better — (greatly lessening the distance, at the same time) 
— to change the law restricting the telegraph to the 
highways, and run them, in a bee-line, across fields, from 
city to city ? The question is an open one, at least ; and 
let us hope to find, by discussing it, that our country can 
be " fast," and yet have the beauty and comfort for the 
many — in such matters, for instance, as the only trees 
whose shade is without money and without price — kindly 
and thoughtfully respected. 



492 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD 



LETTER LXYIII. 

Difficulty of knowing what cures Us— Od-ic Influence— Letter from an Artist, 
introducing and describing an Od-omatrician— His Letter — The Experiment 
— Table-movings, Ac, Ac. 

September 28, 1854. 

Our sick brother Summer is " picking up again." The 
two months' drought has been broken at last by rains ; 
and, though the hectic upon the hills still flushes in the 
cleared air (their slopes looking like strata of fossil rain- 
bows, with the prematurely discolored leaves) the washed 
evergreens look bright and the grass-tips are Mfting once 
more green and beautiful in the pastures. Possibly to 
give me the advantage of a sympathy with the equinox, 
my doctor has followed Nature's treatment of the sick 
Summer ; and, by a sudden change to sustained and 
powerful tonics, has brightened me into such a promise of 
my regular October, that, with casual observers, it 
passes for my time of year — a dropped leaf here and 
there, but not more sad than seasonable. We shall see 
how we stand the letting down of the Indian Summer ; 
but, if there is no pull upon our juices by a second 



D - I C INFLUENCE. 493 

drought, and an autumn of reluctant invigoratiou, 
Summer and I may consider our chasm bridged over. 

One of the puzzles of illness, however, is, when getting 
better, to know what has cured us. One secretly tries a 
thing or two that has been recommended by kind friends, 
not telling the doctor, perhaps, till he comes to rejoice- 
in the success of his prescription. I fear that Homoi- 
opathy and my friend Gray must divide the agency of my 
improval with a certain mysterious power called Od-ic 
Influence, exercised upon me through four white-wood 
wands w^hich I received from a stranger, a week or two 
since, with directions as to the employment of a power 
with which he had impregnated them for my cure. But, 
as all I know of the matter is explainable on paper, and 
as the directions are so full and satisfactory as to be 
easily followed by those who wish, it is a fair contribu- 
tion to the Invalid treasury to make it public — premature 
though, perhaps, it may somewhat be, as a mist from the 
spirit-world whose once remote atmosphere seems draw- 
ing closer around us. 

But, to the story. 

Hand-writings have their physiognomy ; and, on open- 
ing a thick package among my letters by the day's mail, 
and laying aside an outer letter and a pierced card 
through which were run four slender and dagger-shaped 
sticks, of sandal-wood color, and of the length from a 



494 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

lady's bracelet to her wedding ring, I was startled by the 
aspect of a manuscript in a strange, old-fashioned hand — 
four pages closely written, with upright and angular 
letters, and interspersed with curious diagrams and large 
black numbers. It was dated at a small country town 
of which I know something by hearsay, and signed with 
the writer's name — and, by retaining only the date and 
the name, I shall give all that those interested will need 
for experiment, while at the same time, I secure the 
privacy intended in the communication. 

It will be as well to precede the manuscript with part 
of the introductory letter which accompanied it, and 
which gives some particulars of the habits and character 
of my mysterious well-wisher. The introducer is an 
artist, well known for his talents, whom. I once had the 
pleasure of meeting, and who is passing his professional 
summer in the romantic and secluded neighborhood of 
the odimetrician's residence, the old gentleman being a 
distant connection of his family. After an explanation 
as to the inclosed manuscript, my kmd friend goes on to 
say :— 

* * "He (Mr. ) is now sixty-sLx years of age. He is 

independent in his means, has never married, and has mingled 
little with the world. For the last forty years he has slept but 
three or four hours out of the twenty-four. He says he began the 
practice of sitting up late as a cure for suffusion of blood to the 



AN D I M E T R I C I A N . 495 

eyes, and has kept it up ever since. lie rises at six, takes a walk 
of half an hour up and down a tracked path behind his house, of 
which the grounds are extensive, then eats a breakfast which is 
invariably of the same food and quantity — a small plate of 
minced meat, and a slice aud a half of toast covered with pepper 
and lumps of butter. lie remains in his study till a little before 
twelve, takes another walk, dines on an exact repetition of his 
breakfast, remains in his study till five, and then takes another 
walk on the beaten path. His supper is varied by the substitu- 
tion of shad and potato for the minced meat. Coffee he drinks 
morning and evening. He has made this his diet for forty years 
With another walk after his supper he goes to his study, where 
he reads and tries his od-imetric experiments till three or four 
in the morning. 

" Mr. is very tall and of wonderful vigor and youthful- 

nes3 of frame and feeling, though his hair is as white as snow. 
He attributes his strength to his absolutely regular habits, for, 
when young, he was thought by his father (who was a physician) 
to be dying of consumption. He sees no company, except myself, 
and as I sit at table with him, and listen to his conversation, 
exceedingly rich, varied and extraordinary as it is, I mourn that 
Dickens is not here to take his picture for the world. He is a 
rare specimen of the gentleman of the old school in his manners, 
very benevolent to the poor, kind-hearted and generous in all his 
impulses. I never expect to look upon his like again. By the 
neighbors, who are rather superstitious about him, ho is consi- 
dered deranged on religious and scientific subjects, and it is said, 
that he has for years taken opium, though this I think doubtful. 

'* The chance malformation of a double thumb on his right 
hand, in the form of a cross, is considered by Mr. as the 



496 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I L D . 

mark of his high calling as a prophet. He believes himself the 
milennial successor of Isaiah, but says that England is the chosen 
milennial kingdom. He has ^\Titten pamphlets in explanation of 
the prophecies, has had them printed, and is preparing another. 
If I had time I would tell you of his ' grand experiments ' as he 
terms them (and grand they certainly are), accounts of which are 
to appear in his work. I wish you could see them. I have sat up 
with him many a night, seeing him perform his ' enchantments,' 
as he also sometimes names them, and really fearful they were to 
behold. The house is an old one, walls gloomy and dark, and 
there he would sit, dressed in a most unique as well as antique 
costume, hair white as snow, three or four lights shedding a dim 
glare around the apartment, and he, with his pendules, bones and 
machineries, going through a scries of experiments as visionary as 
the drcamings of an eater of ' hasheesh.' 

" Among his opinions, he says ninety out of every one hundred 
are possessed with a devil. He has the power of dispossessing, 
and dispossessed nie, which he told me was the most serious event 
of my whole life. He considers cotton and women diabolic 
mediums, those who wear cotton being more apt to do wrong 
than those who wear linen, the Bible declaring that ' linen is the 
righteousness of the saints.' He writes poetry, and is certainly, 
aside from his idiosyncrasies, a philosopher and a highly culti- 
vated and polished gentleman. He is also a musical composer. 
He sometimes walks around the house singing all night. His 
voice is admirable and of great strength. I have listened many 
an hour in wonder to hear the beauty with which he sings Eng- 
lish songs, as well as sacred music, of which he is very fond. 

* * '• In a letter to him, after seeing by the papers that you 
were so ill, I asked him to send an od-ic to your lungs, distance 



AN ODI METRIC LETTER. 497 

being of no consequence, in bis theory. The result was the letter 
which I inclose. He wrbte it with a sincere belief that it was for 
your recovery. lie afterwards proposed to me that he should pay 
all expenses, and that we should go to Idlewild, to see you and 
show you how to use the wands, &c. His regard for you is very 
great." *••*** 

And by this artistic description of the odimetrician by 
our artist friend, the reader is prepared for the odimetric 
letter itself, which follows verbally as written : — 

, August 14, 1S54. 



*' Sir : — I shall leave it to my friend, well-known as a poet, 
artist, and contributor to American literature, and who, I believe, 
is slightly acquainted with you, to forward this communication, 
with such introductory notes as may be proper. I am a subscriber 
to the Home Journal, and have been much entertained by the 
descriptions of your proceedings at Idlewild, and of the surround- 
ings ; and have felt much sympathy in reading the occasional 
notices of your complaint. I had hoped till latterly, that you 
were recovering, and that the world would long have the benefit 
of the efibrts of your brilliant pen. Two days since, I received a 
letter from Mr. Lawrence, in which he says : — ' I see "Willis is 
failing, and am very sorry. Please throw an odic into his lungs, 
and see if you cannot save him." This I should by no means feel 
at liberty to do, without your knowledge and consent ; although, 

as Mr. well knows, the distance would interpose no obstacle. 

But to explain : — 

" I have for some time been engaged in a course of experiments 
on Reichenbach's od-force, and appear to have made some valu- 
able discoveries ; among which is this : — That every different class 



498 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

of substances has an odic peculiar to itself 5 that these odics can 
be detached and transmitted to a distance with the speed of the 
telegraph, and fixed permanently in other bodies, or any part of 
them, in living bodies, or upon any organ, &c. ; and that the 
odics of medicinal substances produce effects similar to those of 
the substances from which they are derived, exhibited in the usual 
methods, but more ethereal. The Eclectic School of Medicine in 
this country, of which Dr. Buchanan, the discoverer of psychome- 
try, is perhaps regarded as the chief, insists much, of late, upon 
the fact that an article of medicine, carried about the person, even 
in a glass vial hermetically sealed, produces on many sensitives, 
effects similar to those of the medicine, &c. These effects are not 
improbably caused by od-force, for there is no other element or 
principle, at present known, peculiar to any article of medicine, 
that could permeate the glass, &c. But this method of applying 
the OD-FORCE must be very unequal and uncertain. A method 
which I propose, and which I will directly describe, has the 
advantages, that an accurately measured quantity can be thrown 
permanently upon any organ or part of the system which may be 
affected, may be dispersed, wholly or in part, renewed, &c., at 
will. Accompanying this, you will receive four waxds, which 
are supposed to possess very considerable odimetric virtues, which 
I will proceed to specify ; but first, as to the method of using the 
wands. 

" It will be necessary, in the first place, to find one in whose 
hand a pendule will traverse spontaneously. A pendule is a gold 
ring or other light weight, suspended by a thread five or six 
inches long, and held in the right hand, over a motor. A slip of 
any silk stuff, or small piece of cotton or linen cloth, is a good 
motor. When a pendule is held (as above) over one of these, the 



CURIOUS EXPERIMENT. 499 

mind being kept perfectly passive (if in the right hand) the pen- 
dule in a few seconds acquires a spontaneous movement : if over 
silk, rotary ; if over cotton, oscillating ; if over linen, rotary. 
Such an one being found, let him, with one of the wands in his 
right hand, point, with the lesser extremity, to the motor or basis, 
and pronounce mentally, with conscious purpose, this formula : — 

* Let virtue go fortu, degrees, i>.'to the basis " — moving 

the wand slightly, at the close, towards the basis. If the blank 
be filled by the word seven, and if virtue have gone forth, the 
pcndule will now refuse to move, the native and artificial odics 
being exactly balanced. Linen free from cotton, ten degrees. 
If a number greater than seven and less than ninety, be mention- 
ed, the pendule will acquire a new movement. The wands, which 
I will designate, according to the marks, by the numbers one, two, 
three, four, will give, respectively, these movements. [Here 
follow diagrams which we cannot give in print, representing the 
movements.] 

*' To remove the odic, let the operator hold the wand by the 
lesser extremity, and pointing as before, pronounce this formula : 

* Let degrees of the artificial odio be entirely dispersed ;' or, 

* let the artificial odic,' &c. The basis or motor should thus be 
restored partially or wholly to its normal condition. Should, this 
succeed, the operator can throw an odic into the person of another, 
or upon any organ, «S:c. The particular form of words is not 
essential, only a method is requli'ed to concentrate the animus, 
which is the moving force that — so to speak — hoists the gate, or 
throws on the steam, &c. The pendule and wand would, doubt- 
less, operate in the hands of many (where they will not) were it 
not for their surroundings. A new garment of any mixed fabric, 
snufif or tobacco about the person, &c., will commonly prevent. 



500 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

The presence of others who are incredulous or unfriendly, pro- 
duces much the same effect as in mesmeric experiments. 

"Of the wands, number one is designed to operate directly 
upon your disease, the odic to be thrown in upon your lungs. 
Holding the wand as first above, and pointing towards your 
chest, let the operator eay, ''Let virtue go forth into the lungs of 

Mr. Willis degrees.'^ It appears that twenty-five degrees 

svould be a proper dose, though it might be well to begin with a 
less number. I have had no opportunity to try this odic upon 
one in your complaint, but have thro\vn it in upon my own lungs, 
when I had a cold, with excellent cfi'ect. Number two will throw 
an odic of hyoscyamus, designed to abate your cough. I think 
you mentioned that your cough was much worse at night. If so, 
it might be best to disperse this odic for the day, and to employ 
it only at night. The two can be employed together — twenty- 
three degrees being a proper dose of this. 

" Number three. Many persons believe that, to a certaiu extent, 
and in a certain manner, the consumption is contagious. The 
odic of this wand is designed to prevent the effect of this conta- 
gion. There is a family in this region, the father of which, and 
one sister, have died of consumption, and another sister is sick. 
I threw this odic, at a distance of some dozen miles, into the 
lungs of the mother and two well sisters, and into those of a bro- 
ther, last November. Another sister, subsequently. The effect 
appears to have been admirable. The brother's lungs were very 
considerably affected for a long time after the first sister's death. 
But now, though this sister has been sick more than a year, his 
lungs are affected very little — none in the ordinary sense ; he is 
in good health, and his mother and sisters continue well, includ- 
ing one who has been constantly with the invalid. Of her — the 



EFFICACY OF THE ODICS. 501 

sick one — if space permitted, I could tell some remarkable parti- 
culars, tending to prove the efficiency of these applications. Suf- 
fice it to say, she has continued much longer than was expected, 
and is still surprisingly comfortable. 

*• Number four will dispense an onic that I have very consider- 
able rea-son for suppo.=?ingwill be more efficacious in the treatment 
of your complaint than number one, but I have had no oppor- 
tunity of making trial of it. The proper dose of this is also 
twenty-five degrees. That of number thi'ce, for a stout Irish girl, 
eighty-three degrees — for a lady of more delicate organization, 
fifty-three — for a little child, twenty-four. It will be understood 
that all the odics are to be applied to the lungs. The wands will 
operate as far as the limits of an apartment, or, in the open air, 
to a distance of ten feet. They w ill throw ninety degrees of odic 
at once, or any less number, and the process may be repeated at 
will. They will retain their efficacy for one year, or till August 
1-i, 1855, when it will suddenly cease. Number four can be 
employed with number two, but not with number one. 

'• It has given me pleasure, sir, to prepare the wands, and to 
write this hurried and immethodical letter, prompted as I have 

been by Mr. , and hoping I might do some good ; but 

I shall neither be surprised nor disappointed, if you should not deem 
it prudent or expedient to employ applications so little known. 
Should you conclude to make use of them, I should bo gratified 
to hear from you, but not unless you can write without the least 
inconvenience, for I believe all over-exertion in youi' complaint 
is very detrimental. With the best wishes for your welfare and 
recovery, I am, very respectfully 



502 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

It was a rainy afternoon ; and, of the five or six 
guests who chanced to be prisoned in-doors, at Idlewild, 
with the leisure for an experiment on their hands, the 
character was varied enough to give us an unusual chance 
of finding a good "medium." A Judge of the City 
Bench, two lady leaders of society (one from gay and 
inconsequent New York, and one from ethical and abstract 
Boston), a young lady just returned from Europe, a sub- 
stantial merchant, and a successful author, were of the 
circle gathered around the od-ic wands for an experhnent 
— and the last-mentioned (Bayard Taylor) was found to 
be the one in whose force of will best resided the power. 
The lady's gold ring we had borrowed, and, suspended to 
his well-steadied and motionless finger, by a silken thread, 
moved in absolute obedience — circling from right to left, 
or from left to right, backwards or forwards, or from side 
to side, stopping still or resuming motion, as the spec- 
tators requested, and as he accordingly willed. [Whether 
the same gold could be willed out of one pocket into 
another, was the naturally-suggested thought — but that 
degree of o^-icity is probably millennial.] 

Having thus found the " one in whose hand a pendule 
will traverse spontaneously," the slender wands were 
unsheathed ; and, Mr. Taylor assuring us that his "mind 
was perfectly passive," he took each wand in its tarn, 
between his just-tested thumb and fore-finger, selected 



THE EXPERIMENT TRIED. 503 

the degree, "pointed with the lesser extremity to the 
basis" (me), and pronounced the prescribed formula. The 
company were silent. The rain poured heavily. Our 
thoughts played pendulum between the white-haired 
o^-imetrician, hundreds of miles away, and our friend the 
handsome viaduct through whom, at that moment, the 
magic influence must supernaturally pass. He command- 
ed the " virtue to go forth." It probably did. Such 
transfers are vague, at best. What Taylor felt at his 
loss, he may tell us, perhaps, in a poem. I cannot say 
that I had any very definite sensation at the passing of 
his virtue into me. 

But I am " better." Whether it is od-\c or physic, is, 
as I said before, the embarrassing point for my acknow- 
ledgments. Either way, however, I am not the less 
grateful to my venerable o^-imetric friend, whom I respect- 
fully and tenderly hope I shall yet see at Idlewild. His 
wands " retain their efficacy till August 14, 1855 ;" but 
my welcome to him will last longer — if I do. 

I should add, by the way, that we had reason to won- 
der, that afternoon, whether the o£?-ic-opened door may 
not let in other unseen spirits besides the health-bringing 
ones, or whether these may not do more than they are 
bid. Perhaps it may be as well to caution experimenters, 
that, possibly, 

"More water runneth by the mill 
Than wots the miller of." 



604 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

, Our talk naturally led to experiments at table-moving ; 
and one of the wooden-legged quadrupeds — an ormolu 
table, hitherto of the most steady habits, standing in the 
centre of the drawing-room, began to prance with our 
Boston friend's laying her hands lightly upon it, and, the 
next moment (though she is a large and majestic lady), 
knocked her and my little daughter Lilian prostrate upon 
the floor, very nearly upset the Judge, and broke the 
arm of a lotus-crowned statue of Melancholy which was 
on a stand in the corner. It appeared that spirits invok- 
ed to heal lungs, may also assault ladies and children, 
damage furniture, and break objects of art — mischievous 
'' angels of mercy," to say the least. Under the touch 
of one of our visitors (an invalid lady who could scarcely 
walk across the room), the tables, one and all, that even- 
ing, seemed particularly ungovernable. Two of our neigh- 
bors who chanced to come in (our venerable friend S. and 
a stout working farmer) — were obhgcd to hop out of the 
way, in the midst of their unbelief, to make room for the 
" possessed" mahogany, pirouetting under the mere touch 
of her slender fingers. Xo two of the men present could, 
by holding on with main strength, stop the one-lady's- 
will-power thus exercised — the table rising from the floor 
or gliding away, as if gentlemen-wills were the only 
obstacle. The faces of the scared servants, who were 
peeping in at the doors, would have been a study for 

/ 



'/ 



TABLE-MOVING. 505 

Fuseli. The very tables they had bees-waxed every 
day ! 

Of course we "believed" nothing — any of us. But this 
was what we saiv. 

I may as well add, perhaps, that, to my own touch, 
the "possessed" tables were wholly insensible — as they 
were to the touch of all the gentlemen present. They 
danced only with ladies. 

And all this from having a cough to cure. 'We must 
not be inconsolable, dear brother invalids. 



22 



506 LETTERS PROM IDLEWILD. 



LETTER LXIX. 

Acquaintance across the Styx — Letter from our Friend the Od-ometrician, &c. 

September 30, 1854. 

I AM by no means sure that our inYalid society has not 
proved attractive to unseen spirits. We have more to 
wonder at than we used to have, and nearer neighbor- 
hood, perhaps, may have brought us calls from " Styx's 
other shore " — as might be easily imagined from the 
results of our conjuring experiments with the od-\c wands, 
as recorded in the last number of the Home Journal. 
We are assured, by the poet, that " parting spirits see 
across," and there is abundant reason to l^elieve that 
parted spirits cannot only see back, but make their eyes 
felt, over the ferry they have passed. Looks, from the 
spirit-land, rest upon us, every heart must, at times, have 
been made to feel. 

But, to get wards to us— they whose lips are shadows 
and whose tongues are air ! To the music without 
words, which is their voice — the voices of sweet influences 
unsyllablcd — we need an opening through the flesh-coatings 



I 

A SWEET BELIEF. 507 

of the ear. If spirits speak to us, therefore, it is indi- 
rectly — through words borrowed from others — by tongues 
or pens which they " possess " to speak or write to us. 
We may be spoken to by friends, with words of counsel 
or cheer, when the apology is more literal than they 
think — " because the spirit moves them" — another spirit 
than their own, to whose promptings they have thus lent 
mortal utterance. 

Oh, to bridge that gulf with our "belief in spirits !" 
That a child may be reached from heaven by its mover's 
love and watchfulness ! That love may follow thither — 
told of by the same chain of electric consciousness which 
brings their love to us ! Rather than retard the coming 
of a " mesmeric " millennium like this, let us be thought 
visionary and credulous. Life has arithmetic enough. 

Of one of our invalid company who has died since we 
began to have a sick-room corner in our journal, I am 
made to feel something like the continued memory. 
These too careless gossippings were her pleasure in her 
illness. A stranger personally, she made such eager 
search along the shore of the Hudson, in her last journey 
up the river — wishing to see, before she died, the Idle- 
wild where those like her were remembered — that the 
broken heart of him who mourns for her turns hither with 
its sadness His letters, far away as he is, seem to bring 
me with him to her presence. They are strangely touch- 



508 LETTERS FROM IDLE WILD. 

ing, beautiful, aud truthful. The pen should write reve- 
rently that sends vibrations to such strings. 

With belief turned out upon God's large universe, 
however — exploring for discovery rather than fencing in 
from conviction — speculation tempts far. Let us try our 
wings once more with my friend the mysterious and vene- 
rable o^-omctrician, who thus discourses to me, in a 
second letter, dated September 13, 1854 : — 



*' SiK : — I will suppose that a former communication, of August 
14, has been received. I cannot doubt, if so, that you have some 
curiosity to know more about the od-force ; and I propose — 
hojDing it will amuse you — to give you some little account of its 
Effects upon vegetation. Last fall I threw od-ics into the only 
growing crop, turnips ; and the result led me to the conclusion, 
that vegetation might be accelerated fifty per cent, in the course 
of the growing season. The experiments of the present season 
hav^moare than confirmed this supposition. Of six cotton plants, 
Bide by side— circumstances all similar — the three that were 
od-icised the 1st of July, weighed, compared with the non-od- 
icised, August 25, in the proportion of 147 to 100. 

" I have made another very interesting discovery. You are 
aware that some persons cannot bear cotton next the skin. It 
produces irritation, general uneasiness, itching, inflamed eyes, 
aggravates humors, &c. The number of those who are insi- 
diously aflFected, is probably greater, beyond comparison, than 
of those who are aflected palpably and unequivocally. There is 
reason to believe that it lays the foundation of various chronic 



A POINT OF ETHICS. 509 

and lingering complaints ; and I believe that the indirect (or 
direct !) moral effect is more to be deprecated than the hygienic 
or non-hygienic. A person who cannot wear cotton socks in 
warm vreather, without such continual itching, that, as a natural 
consequence, the ankles and feet have as many galled spots as a 
first-rate patriot could expect at the close of an electioneering 
campaign, has worn, the past season, cotton socks that had been 
permanently de-od-icised, and od-icised with the od-ic of linen, 
of the normal intensity, without the least inconvenience. The 
cotton seemed entirely "healed," — to be effectually linenized. 

" Will you permit me, in this connection, to suggest a point of 
ethics ? If you have had the curiosity to look over one or two 
pamphlets that I have sent you, on the prop/ietical Scriptures 
(perhaps sent to the Home Journal), you may recollect that I 
have advanced the theory that England is the nation to which the 
kingdom of God was to be given (Matt. xxi. 43), — the millennial 
kingdom. Now, should these discoveries, at first, be generally 
disseminated, or limited, for a time, to the millennial kingdom ? 
I have called the above a point of ethics, but it is ethico-pojiticijl — 
the ethical considerations at the basis. I do not wish you tc^^^give 
me an ex-cathcdrd opinion on the subject, nor indeed any opinion, 
unless it should come in your way to give an intelligible hint in 
the Home Journal. For many years I have been almost a 
recluse ; during which time you have travelled much, observed 
much, and reflected much. 

*' I am getting on as I can with a pamphlet on the subject of 
the of/-force, which I hope to have in readiness for distribution by 
the middle of November. If you wish, I will send you a bundle 
of them for distribution among your friends. 

'■ I take the liberty to send you two more wands. They are set 



510 LETTERS FROM I D L E W I L D . 

as to degrees, etc., like the others. No. 1 throws a compouud od-io 
of bugle-weed and sugar of lead, designed to prevent hemoptysis. 
Dose, thrown into the lungs, twenty-five degrees, though I should 
recommend a smaller dose at first, and great caution. No. 2 
throws a compound od-lc of French brandy (the real article, such 
as used to be in the market forty years ago), quassia, and the 
sulphate of zinc, designed as an appetizer and tonic — dose, 
forty-five degrees, to be thrown into the stomach. According 
to my theory, the consumption makes little or no progress, so 
long as the stomach can be kept in tone. Hence the singular 
benefit of exercise on horseback. 

" Since commencing this letter, I have visited ^plantation which 
I have at some little distance. There are cotton plants (which 
have grown, from the seed, under orf-ometric influences) that are 
three and one-half feet high, and much the same in diameter. One 
of them is supposed to have some fifty buds, blossoms, and balls 
upon it. Some of the balls are, and will be, I think, matured 
sufficiently to produce acclimated seed for another year. I have 
learned much this season, and should judge from critical observa- 
tion, that the plant might be matured, another year, six weeks 
earlier. That it can, by selecting the earliest acclimated seed, and 
by continuing od-ometno influences, be acclimated in a few years, 
is, I think, little doubtful. There is also a magnificent growth of 
river rice, though grown on upland. The product of a single 
seed, in some instances, is a dense cluster of stems, as large as I 
can clasp with both hands — the broad rice-grass above, reaching 
in some instances, to the height of three and one-half feet. But, 
there is not a single seed-bearing stalk. The plants grew on a 
side hill, exposed to the full glare of the sun all day, but suffered 
less from drought than most other vegetation. I see no reason 



CULTIVATION BY ODICS, 611 

why the upland or dry rice may not be grown as well in New 
Eap:land as ia Alabama ; and the river rice in water, as well as in 
South Carolina. At any rate, on the uplands, it would be exceed- 
ingly productive for feed. I held a wisp to Mulley (cow)^ and she 
almost dislocated my arm by tearing off a mouthful. It is very 
tenacious, in consequence of having little moisture ; and, for 
the same reason, the yield would be great. I should judge it 
would not lose more than half as much weight, by drying, as 
English grass. 

" Should you happen to wish for other wands, for any specific 
purpose, please to write, and I will endeavor to prepare them. — 
I am, sir, with great respect, your obedient servant, 



*' P. S. — Some rice that I have dried by the stove, and just weigh- 
ed, lost in weight but about sixty per cent" 

The question in ethics proposed by this venerable stu- 
dent of mysteries, is too broad and difficult to be answer- 
ed — short, at least, of his own scope and study in a 
pamphlet ; but I remember a passage which has a bear- 
ing upon it, and which I ran a pencil against, years ago, 
in a book of very high authority — viz. : " That the world 
is not fit to he trusted with secrets, even concerning move- 
ments for its own good, is a princi2)le acted upon by wise 
men, as wdl as by mysterious Providence.'^ Whether our 
friend himself is not on the scene-shifter's side of the cur- 
tain not ready to be raised, is a nice question also, I am 



512 LETTERS FROM IDLEWJLD. 

inclined to think ; though the class who form the readers 
of the Home Journal are, perhaps, the best pick that 
could be made for the exceptions to see a " star in the 

East." 



THE GENIUS LOCI. 513 



LETTER LXX. 

Certainty of a Genius Loci — His Susceptibility of Pique — Cui-ious Exercise of 
it — The Drip-Rocli Parlor — Check to a falling Leaf— Farewell. 

October 7, 1854. 

Separate a rural spot from the rest of the world, 
either by poetry or property — only putting around it the 
fairy ring of a thought-haunt, where your love and sad- 
ness are at home — and it is curious how you are made 
gradually conscious that there is a genius loci, a spirit, 
inhabiting just what you have fenced in with thoughts 
or rails. The almost inarticulate welcome that you feel, 
as you enter the gate, or re-cross the limit after absence 
— the sigh of deserteduess as you go from it into the 
world — show that it is a loving spirit, though (like an 
angel with a prudent mamma) it waited to see some 
definite habitation before acknowledging the preference. 
But we mistake, I think, if we invest it with any quali- 
ties that are inconvenient — any mystery or majesty, that 
is to say, which would inspire awe, or make us any way 
uncomfortable. It is a familiar spirit. Its demonstra- 
tions are very human — playful and capricious, when not 



514 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD, 

called upon to be sympathetic and tender. Our table- 
movings last week, I more than half suspect were mere 
bits of fun by the Spirit of Idlewild. 

But, that the "spirit of a spot" is susceptible of pique, 
was a discovery of mine a day or two ago — more inte- 
resting as being another step in the mortal-ward progress 
which the spirit world is making (or which is thought to 
be shown in the spirit world's behaving as men and 
women would very likely do in the same circumstances, 
or out of the reach of their ordinary amusements and 
occupations), and the new knowledge is therefore perhaps 
worthy to be recorded. The future historian of our age, 
with his increased responsibilities, may thank us — his 
business being with the events of things visible and a 
little way beyond. 

The most precious natural treasure of Idlewild, as well 
as its most beautiful feature, had been left undescribed. 
At the farthest depth between precipices, hidden and 
romantically wild, lies a sanctuary of rock and water, 
which for various whims of reasons, I have never chanced 
to portray, in these my descriptive pencillings. It was 
partly because I wished for more leisure to sketch the 
spot well, partly because its coyness of privacy was a 
charm which the directing of attention to it mght destroy 
— the common rambler through the glen walking over 
its rock-roof, and leaving it unvisited and unsuspected. 



THE DRIP-ROCK. 515 

And so the Spirit of Idlewild felt a sigh — lier drip-rock 
parlor, with its overhanging eaves and cool floor, its 
lofty shading of trees and its deep-down basin, left all 
unpicturcd. 

But, if / would not do it, somebody else would. Oh, 
the Spirit of the Spot did not depend altogether on me ! 
If it could not bring another writer actually here to de- 
scribe it, there was a first-rate one who could be made to 
see it in a dream ! And he would tell his dream I What 
was my amazement to take up " TAe Independent,^^ last 
Saturday, and, in the midst of Beecher's charming letter 
from his new home in the country, read the following 
abrupt digression — a sudden and most singular breaking 
away from his actual description of what was around him, 
to portray most graphically and exactly, this drip-rock 
parlor at Idlewild : — 

" I have always wished that there might be a rock-spring upon 
my place. I could wish to have, back of the house some two 
hundred yards, a steep and tree-covered height of broad, cold, 
and mossy rocks — rocks that have seen trouble, and been upheaved 
by deep inward forces, and are lying in any way of noble confu- 
sion, full of clefts, and dark and mysterious passages, without 
echoes in them, upholstered with pendulous vines and soft with 
deep moss. Upon all this silent tumult of wild and shattered 
rocks, struck through with stillness and rest, the thick forest 
should shed down a perpetual twilight. The only glow that ever 
chased away its solemn shadows should be the red rose-light of 



516 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD, 

sunsets, shot beneath the branches and through the trunks, light- 
ing up the gray rocks with strange golden glory. What light ia 
BO impressive as this last light of the day streaming into a forest 
so dark that even insects leave it silent ? Yes, another light is as 
strange — that rose-light of the afternoon, which shines down a hill- 
side of vivid green grass, taking its hues, and strikes through the 
transparent leaves into the forest below, and spreads itself along 
the ground in a tender color for which we have no name, as if 
green was just melting into rose color, and orange color was just 
seizing them both. 

" But to return to the spring. In such a rock forest as I have 
spoken of, far up in one of its silent aisles, a spring should burst 
forth, making haste from the seams of the rock, as if just touched 
with the prophet's rod — cold, clear, cop!bus and musical from its 
birth. All the way to the outer edge of the forest it should find, 
its own channels, and live its own life, unshaped by human hands. 
But before the sun touched it, we should have a rock reservoir, 
into which it should gather its congregation of drops now about 
to go forth into useful life. Thence it should have liberty of will 
to flow where it could not help flowing, through strong pipes into 
every chamber of the house. And it should be to every room 
copious as the atmosphere, so that one might bathe in molten ice 
every hour of the day if he chose, without fear of exhausting the 
fountain, and in the joy of abundance laeyond all squandering.* 
Just such a spring I have not, and cannot have." 

* Making it a point to be literally correct in these sketches, I should here 
observe, that, though the spring flows " where it cannot help flowing," and so 
"to every room in the house," there is a circumstance which Mr. Beecher 
omits to mention, viz. — that this path to the house, being one hundred and 



SKETCH FROM NATURE. Sit 

And here he returns to his otvn Tempe — quite uncon- 
scious, probably, that, with his eloquent digression, he 
has been gratifying the jealous pique of the Spirit of mine 
— literary describing the beauty-spot I had neglected ! 

I have made what atonement was possible to the 
offended glen-fairy — showing her tall drip-curtain and its 
romantic surroundings to Wandesford the artist, who 
chanced to be staying with us, and who immediately 
picked out the point of view for his pencil of magic. He 
will make such a picture of that hiding-place of beauty as 
will stir pens more poetical than mine. 

I called Wandesford's attention to a pretty Httle mock 
of invalid enjoyment of life, as he was sketching in 
another part of the glen, that morning. Cut off from 
conversation for awhile, by his wanting my broad- 
brimmed hat in the background, to give effect to his 
drawing, I was in the bliss of a summer morning's mere 
existence — gazing into the depths of the glen without a 
thought that had more grammar in it than the pulse in 
my wrist — when an object of unusual brilliancy and 
activity caught my eye. The rock I was " doing figure " 
upon was a seat half way down a hanging path in the 

fifty feet up a precipitous hill, it goes that trifle out of its way by the persuasion 
of a hydraulic ram — its own weight being made the propulsive force (the same 
as in the down-hill part of its journey), according to the principle of that most 
beautiful of mechanic inrentlons. 



618 LETTERS FROM IDLEWILD. 

side of a cliff, the broken light flickering through the 
gigantic trees overhead, and the furious cascades which 
were performing their accustomed sublimities far below, 
keeping a constant tremulousness in the air. 

My eye had once or twice rested upon what I took to 
be a hovering butterfly, poised midway over the abyss ; 
but, with its humming-bird activity of wings, and its 
remaining unchangeably in one Bpot, my attention 
became gradually fixed upon it. It was a faded leaf, 
held by a spider's thread, but so poised that it revolved 
in the currents of air with the glitter and show of an 
insect. Wandesford left his pencils to come and look at 
it. The cobweb was invisible, and he was puzzled to see 
how it was upheld, or why, with its wonderful liveliness 
of revolution, it did not wear itself loose from a thread 
so delicate. But there it fluttered — checked half way to 
the swift current below, and lingering in the summer air, 
more moved with every passing breath than in its vigor 
of June. And there it lingers still. I have seen it 
since, morning after morning, in my ramble — waiting, 
probably, for the deferred winds of a gentle Autumn to 
loose it when the skies grow ruder. 

There is one fair lingerer, far "West, who has written to 
number herself in the troop for whom we gossip, and she 
will find in this leaf her cheerful likeness. May her 
thread — and that of all to whom this invahd gossip has 



THE author's conge. 519 

been the wile-time of a summer prolonged beyond hope — 
part before the storm would be too wintry. The falling 
leaf should not linger till ice would make its grave. 

4c « 3|C 9|C * 

And here the Letters from Idlewild come to an end. 
The author has thus long — not too long, he trusts — made 
the readers of the Home Joiirnal guests at his home. He 
brought them here at first, because, confined to its seclu- 
sion himself, he felt that he might claim an invalid's privi- 
lege to be kindly visited. The friendly interest and will- 
ingness to listen have been shown in many ways, and have 
been, it need scarce be said, most deeply gratifying. The 
readers of the Journal have rapidly increased and are now, 
many indeed ; and if the author's friendship in the world 
may be thus measured, he can well afford to care little for 
its fame. He assures these kind thousands that the 
memory of their sympathetic listenings will be tenderly 
cherished in his heart, though the gate of Idlewild is here 
shut upon the pen that is their servant. 



THE END. 












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